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John Coury Oral History Interview

Coury Interview, Pt 1

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN COURY
Today is August 29, 1991, I am Jerry Abbitt and I will be interviewing John Coury.
JA: Why don’t you start by taking me through how your family ended up here in the Arizona area and eventually to Glendale, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. What was part of the transition to bring you here from where you were originally?
JC: It was the Turkish war that started back in the middle of the 1800s. If you studied your history you have heard about the Moors, which were the Turks, that came in through North Africa up to Spain. The other group went across Greece up to about the middle of Europe. They were Muslims. There were Catholics in Lebanon. Lebanon was not Lebanon then, it was Syria. Lebanon wasn’t declared Lebanon until 1930 when they created it. It was a part of Syria.
They started killing the Christians. My folks were Christians. There were Armenians, and they were Christians, too. They started killing them off. My dad and mom [Elias Thomas and Gaeta (Daou) Coury] were just newly married and they killed some of their relatives, so dad took off first. Well, dad’s brother [in-law, Mansour Daou] came over first. He went over to Canada. After he was settled in Canada, he brought my grandmother [over], my dad’s mother, and they stayed in Canada. My dad went to Canada, too, but he didn’t like the winters out there. As I was telling you, my mother’s brother had come [to the United States] and he ended up in Morenci, [Graham County, Arizona] which at that time was a mining town. Still is, I suppose.
JA: Yes.
JC: He told them how nice the weather was down here. He started off in the fall of 1906, I believe, and there weren’t any airplanes at that time [laughter] and the trains were far and few. There were not many. So part of [the trip] he came across the place they call Port Huron, [Michigan]. That is between Canada and the United States. Then he came down part on stagecoach, to the where they had trains. He ended up in Chicago, [Illinois] and from there, from there were trains. But like dad said the trains would only go 50 or 100 miles at the most, then they wouldn’t run again for another three or four weeks. The same train would go back [to the original point], or you couldn’t get passage on it. So it took him until next spring to get down here. He ended up in Holbrook, [Navajo County, Arizona]. From Holbrook he came down by stagecoach. He came down as far as Tempe, [Maricopa County, Arizona] and from Tempe, the copper mine had started the railroad line that was coming up towards Phoenix, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: Yes.
JC: From there he took that one over there. Anyway, when he got there, most of the people out there were merchants.
JA: From out there meaning in Morenci?
JC: From Lebanon.
JA: Okay.
JC: Most of them are merchants. For example, you have heard of Fred Koory, who was running for Governor [of Arizona] and didn’t make it? Well, his [grand] dad [George Koory] is a Lebanese. He is a Coury too, but the spelling of the name, by the way, depends upon the man who brings you in.
JA: Really?
JC: The immigration man. Because the names are spelled in Arabic and the immigration man doesn’t know how to write in Arabic. So what does he do? He spells it the best way that he can or [as] he thinks it should be. That other man, Fred Koory, they put K-O-O-R-Y. I think in my dad’s case, it was an Irishman. They spell Coury with a C over in Ireland. So he put C-O-U-R-Y. That’s the way he made it. [My dad] figured that it didn’t make any difference, they were making a new start in a new country anyway. So the name didn’t make any difference.
Now you wanted to know which of the guys came in from Lebanon. There was my uncle, Daou who later moved over here to Glendale.
JA: What’s his first name?
JC: His first name was Masour, M-A-N-S-O-U-R, I can’t spell it just exactly. His last name was Daou.
JA: Okay.
JC: Daou, by the way in Arabic, means light.
JA: Light?
JC: Yes.
JA: So he brought the light to Glendale.
JC: He came in and had a dry-goods store, right down town. You know where they sell pictures now, what do they call it? They had an article about them having a showing. It is the same building that he was in. Right south—
JA: South of the park?
JC: By the park, yes, and what do they call it?
JA: As I was driving by today I was trying to memorize the names of everything, but I didn’t get them.
JC: That one I think they have color pictures of colored artists. My dad ended up in a place they call Ray, Arizona. He started a little grocery store there. In 1912 the whole town burned down.
JA: The town of Ray?
JC: Yes.
JA: Okay.
JC: The wooden sidewalks and everything burned down, and so did his store. He moved across the river, it was a creek and they called it Mineral Creek. He bought an adobe building there and put in a grocery store. At that time there was an outfit by the name of Steinfield’s. Have you ever heard of Steinfield’s in Tucson, [Pima County, Arizona]?
JA: No, what were they?
JC: They had a branch over here in Ray and later on they moved to Tucson and they became like Goldwater’s in Tucson, like the Goldwater’s here in Phoenix.
JA: So they got started in Ray?
JC: I think they got started in Ray. Dad used to buy stuff from them. They had a wholesale house. The little town of Sonora was on the Mexican side of the mining town. They were talking about people who were coming in from Lebanon. There was Saba’s, a western store. I see they have a new branch over here on 75th [Avenue] and on the south side there is a Safeway store and right next to it, let’s see north of Olive would be Peoria—
JA: Peoria?
JC: It is on Peoria and I think 75th there’s a big shopping center on the four corners.
JA: I think so, it has been a long time since I have been up that far.
JC: Then on the southwest corner, I came in through there because they have Olive all blocked where they are putting in new pipes, anyway, they have a Saba’s there. Anyway, they were down there [in Ray]. There was a [inaudible], they are from Mesa, [Maricopa County, Arizona] now. There were the Bashas, Basha’s grocery store, they were down there. There were some Karams.
JA: Karams?
JC: Karams, yes.
JA: Is that a store?
JC: Yes. Basha’s sold their dry goods store to Karams in 1929. They moved next to Chandler, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. What was the name of it?
JA: Gilbert?
JC: It was around there some place. They started a grocery store. Before that they were in dry goods only . There were the Gannons. They have Jordan’s Restaurants in Phoenix. They are Lebanonese, too.
JA: Okay.
JC: Who else was there? There was some Elias but I don’t know if they have any businesses in Phoenix now.
JA: What did they run, what was their business?
JC: They had dry goods stores out there.
JA: All of these were in Ray?
JC: In Sonora. After Ray burned down, they all moved over to Sonora. The company started building it up. Ray wasn’t that large, Sonora was larger. Some of them moved to Superior, [Pinal County, Arizona]. The ones that ended up here in Glendale were the Koorys, K-O-O-R-Y, he had a market. You know where Sergeant’s Market is?
JA: No.
JC: He built Sergeant’s Market, but he had another market before that, about a block down on the eastside, [Fifth Avenue Grocery] which is now an empty lot. There was a Chinaman, by the name of Sing [George Wong Sing]—
JA: George Sing.
JC: He had the market across the street. Let’s see who else was there? There was my uncle, Daou. I didn’t come in until 1940. I graduated from [the University of Arizona] Tucson. I laugh about that! Dad used to make fun of me. He said, “You went four years to college and got a degree in banking and you are going to get paid $75. a month. Is that all? You could sell peanuts on the corner and make more money than that!”
We were walking down Glendale Avenue from 58th over this way, and where that little karate place was, there was a little grocery store. The man [James Scully] had died and the widow was trying to run it and she was having a rough time. It was for sale. Before two days were over, I ended up buying that store. Dad bought it for me. That’s how I got started in the grocery business.
JA: Really?
JC: I was there for 21 years in that one spot. Then we bought this old building that used to be known as the Ryder Building. I think it is the one that they tore down that used to be the grocery store. We remodeled it and moved in there. Now Safeway was there before us.
JA: What street are you on, what crossroads?
JC: You know where the City Hall is?
JA: Yes.
JC: That 58th Drive [First Avenue] used to go through.
JA: Okay, so it was the building that they tore down in order to build the City Hall.
JC: The City Hall is there now.
JA: Okay.
JC: Do you know Mrs. Stockham?
JA: Yes, Volene?
JC: Volene Stockham, she and her husband, [Carl], had the meat market [Stockham’s Meat Market was located in the back of Foster’s Grocery Store], you remember that place that I told you they were selling pictures—
JA: Yes.
JC: Then there is a print shop, where the print shop is used to be a pool hall and a barber shop in the front window.
JA: Okay.
JC: Then right next door used to be a finance place. It has been empty for awhile now. Mrs. Stockham and her husband had a meat market in half of that [building] and there was a guy by the name of [Buster] Foster.
JA: Yes, Foster’s Grocery.
JC: Right next to it. Mrs. Stockham and her husband had one side of it and Foster had the other side. Right next to it was a bigger building, I think it was 50 feet, was JC Penneys. There was a fellow by the name of [Al] Jorgenson, a veteran, who was in partners with Mr. J. C. Penney. [Those] were some of the original stores. The guy and J. C. Penney were 50-50 partners. Then right next door to that one is the karate place. That’s where I was with [my] grocery store.
JA: Okay.
JC: Then right next to that one was a fellow by the name of Biaett [D. H.] and his wife. [The Federated Store]
JA: Biaett?
JC: Yes, Biaett. His son [Kenneth] was a lawyer [who] practiced law here in Glendale for 25 or 30 years. I think he just retired. He had a Federated Store. They used to call them Federated Stores. Right next door to that one, where there is a little restaurant, what do they call that little Mexican restaurant?
JA: [I don’t know.]
JC: You don’t live in Glendale then?
JA: No, I live just on the outside of it. I’m trying to walk through town though.
JC: That’s what I am doing, I’m walking you through that one block. There is a Mexican restaurant there. It is one of the retired policemen and his wife that have a restaurant there. Okay, there was a fellow by the name of Summers [Gene]. But before Summers there was this guy who was Justice of Peace of Glendale [who] had a dry goods store there, a men’s store, just for men’s clothing. I forget his name. [Frank Carden] Later on he sold it to this fellow by the name of Summers and he had a men’s store for quite awhile. Later on he died and [it] was closed up. Then a pawnshop [was there] for quite awhile. Right in the corner where the gym was that they just closed up—
JA: Okay.
JC: Originally there was a Newman’s Department Store. Before that there was a bank [Glendale State Bank] that went broke in the depression of 1921. Then a fellow by the name of Newman put a department store in. Later on he sold out [to Carroll Wood for Wood’s Drug Store] and Ryan Evans [purchased Wood’s from its current owner, D. H. “Red” Wilson] put a drugstore there. Ryan Evans had it for quite awhile. There was a fellow by the name of “Red” Wilson that used to run that and he bought [sold] the store [to] Ryan Evans. He [ran it] as a drugstore for quite awhile.
JA: It seems to me like there was an awful lot of dry goods stores and grocery stores in that little area, given what you described it.
JC: That was the whole town, the whole town!
JA: A lot of competition.
JC: Going back east, on the eastside on the next block, the houses started where the Valley [National] Bank— [Chase]
JA: Yes.
JC: There was a two-story house there. There was where the doctor lived. [Dr. Robert Franklin] Where the Telephone Company is was another two-story house and there was another doctor there. [Dr. J. M. Pearson] But that was the whole town! Well, it was a small town.
JA: Now what time period are we talking about? Is this in 1940 when you came?
JC: I came in 1940, but I went back further than 1940 on some of [what I told you] to give you a history of each building as you come up. Across the street there was an Ever Ready Drug Store [Glendale Pharmacy is what he is referring to. Ever Ready was on a different corner]. That was [on the] south side of The First National Bank building. Is that what it is now? Where the lawyer [Richard Coffinger] is, the only building [sitting down] in the triangle? That was a dry goods store, no, it was a drug store then. Right next to it was a service station on the corner and there was a Western Auto Store there.
Later on the Western Auto Store moved across the street to where one of those antique shops is and it became a liquor store, the liquor department for the drug store. [“Doc” Jones’ Glendale Pharmacy]
JA: Really?
JC: That Western Auto Store and service station was owned by a guy by the name of Whitney, Joe Whitney and his brother [partner, Vic Brooks]. I don’t know if you ever heard of them?
JA: Yes. Would that have been a Firestone or a Western Auto?
JC: Maybe it was a Firestone Store, [on the corner of S. First and Grand. It was owned by Marion “Mutt” Whitney.] I don’t know which. [Vic Brooks and Joe Whitney owned the Western Auto on the westside of the street and the Brooks and Whitney Auto Parts Store on the eastside.]
JA: I believe they owned the Firestone, if you are referring to the same Whitneys that I—
JC: Maybe that’s it, then. Maybe it is the Firestone Store. Now, on this side of the street, right on the corner was a five and dime store. I forget what her name was. [Evans] Later on she started Youngtown, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: No kidding?
JC: She had a dry goods store and she built a big house in Youngtown and a lot of her friends wanted to come in and live around and she had a house with a lot of grass and I think a swimming pool. So she sort of started it.
JA: Oh?
JC: On this side of the street there was Ladda’s Café, a Greek fellow had it. Right next to it was a barbershop and an optometrist. The optometrist was [Dr. John] Fahrendorf. Maybe you have heard of Fahrendorf?
JA: He was my eye doctor when I was growing up.
JC: He first started right there across the street. In fact, if you ever see him, ask him about the time, that bank was a Valley [National] Bank, and some guy robbed the bank one time. Fahrendorf and a bunch [of guys] were involved in trying to catch him, I don’t know [for sure].
JA: Really!
JC: Yes, they caught the guy. He was just a poor guy who was half drunk and didn’t have any money and he had his rifle with him.
So across the alley from there was Sine Hardware, in that big two story building. That has been there since 1890 [1911] something.
JA: Big establishment. Would you have competed with them, given the dry goods nature of your business?
JC: No, mine was groceries. I had a grocery store.
JA: Okay, it was your uncle that was running the dry goods store when you first came. Would that have been in direct competition to Sine Hardware?
JC: No, Sine Hardware was hardware.
JA: Just hardware.
JC: The other one was clothing.
JA: Okay.
JC: They had shoes, hats, underwear, coats, suits, just soft goods, clothing. It isn’t like nowadays where they sell hardware and everything [else].
JA: I guess not, okay.
JC: Across the street, right behind where the City Hall is today, in the back part where the parking garage is, there was a Mexican Bakery there, a Mexican pool hall, and there was a second-hand hardware store there. On 58th, where it is closed, there was, what’s his name, he had a bicycle shop right across from the parking lot. Right next to it was a glass place. The glass place is now on 59th Avenue, about a block or so down on the west side. They moved from there to there.
JA: Okay.
JC: First it was an auto license place and then later on it became a TV place. [Ralph] Master’s TV [first it was Weigold’s Market and after World War II the license place and finally Master’s Radio and TV] had a place there. When they had to move over, they moved over north of the Valley [National] Bank. Now, I understand that they have moved way up north some place.
The City Hall was there and had two buildings. Right on the corner there was a hardware store. I forget the name of the hardware store [and farm implement company, O. S. Stapley’s.] There was a big hardware store there, right across from the [First United] Methodist Church.
Let’s see, on the other side of the park [Murphy Park] where [now is] First Security Pacific, [Bank of America] there was a law office there on the corner. Biaett and Bahde, he became mayor afterwards. [neither became Mayor.] They had law offices there. [Dr. Roger] Trueblood had a home and an office right there. [Trueblood’s office was in the former home and office of Dr. Denninger.] The print shop [Valley Printers which had published The Glendale Herald was next to Trueblood’s.] that is over on, right next to the, north [south] of the Sage There is a dentist there now and a print shop. [He is referring to Pueblo Publishing and the dentist’s office was the new offices of Dr. Roger, Dr. Roger K. and Dr. Craig Trueblood. Thee Trueblood’s moved from the Glenn Drive location to these offices on 59th Ave..]
JA: Okay.
JC: He was next to Trueblood’s place. Right on the northeast corner of the park, right across the street, was Roonie Slack’s Service Station.
JA: Yes, Roonie Slack.
JC: Roonie Slack, I don’t know if you remember him or not.
JA: Yes, I have interviewed with him.
JC: Let’s see, what else. That’s about the most of it. On the east side there was a movie picture house, [The El Rey] Betts Insurance [Betts and Traubel moved into the theater building when the theater closed.] and, I don’t know if you remember Betts Insurance or not.
JA: Yes.
JC: Right on the south [north] side of the corner was the ice cream place. I forget what the name of it was. [Upton’s] Maybe you can ask somebody.
JA: Okay. As I have listened to you describe—
JC: I am describing around the park [Murphy Park].
[END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE ONE]
JC: We went around the park area. On the south side of the park there was a, right on the corner where Miller Shoe Store is, there was a Valenzuela Department Store, a dry goods store [Leonard Valenzuela’s El Paso Store]. Right next to it was Henri Sanchez’ Jewelry Store. On the east side of the park was The Glendale News. A fellow by the name of “Bill” [William] Ryan used to run it.
JA: “Bill” Ryan?
JC: Yes, he passed away, he was up in his years. He ran the newspaper and everything.
JA: What was the atmosphere like with all of you business people, what kind of interaction did you have as the business community of Glendale in those early years?
JC: It was friendly and a lot of people, most of them, came downtown. For example, we didn’t open up [on] Sundays. Grocery stores didn’t open up on Sundays.
JA: Okay.
JC: So we opened up on Saturdays until 12:00, because a lot of people used to come in and buy their groceries. Then you’d put them in boxes, and then you’d put their name on it, and they usually went to the moving picture. When the picture show was out they would come over and their groceries were ready to go. Of course, in those days, [we] didn’t have all the frozen stuff, [or] ice cream, [and things] like that. It was mostly staples and stuff.
JA: That’s right. So your Saturday night was a work night, it wasn’t the enjoyment of the social atmosphere of Glendale?
JC: The whole thing was social. The people coming in to trade with you. They didn’t rush in and rush out. They came in and they visited with you. You visited up and down the aisle with, “How’s everything?” and all this other stuff. Some of them, the ones you knew better, they wanted to talk more. A lot of them were farmers, some of them worked on farms. It was just a friendly town! By the way, when I came [here] in 1940 Glendale had about 5,000 people.
JA: Okay.
JC: [Then] the north edge of the town was Orangewood [Avenue]. The rest was farm country.
JA: Hard to believe, isn’t it?
JC: Yes. Going east, 51st was about the end of it, [that] was where the Sugar Beet Factory is now. That was a cotton compress. They had a place there where they baled the cotton. Where Cerreta [Candy Company] and those thrift shops are, and the mechanic shop, that was the place where they baled the cotton. Then after the war [World War II] started they closed that down and they put trailers there for the soldiers [airmen] to live in.
JA: Really? So that’s where they were located.
JC: They had a bunch of trailers in there.
JA: When you came in 1940, Glendale’s coming out of The Depression era, and getting ready naively, not knowing it yet, getting ready to move into the war era. What did you find in terms of the business here? Was it booming, was it slow, was it active?
JC: That store I took over was dead! It took me a year or so to build it up. The man [James Scully] had died in 1938 and Mrs., I forget her name, the widow [Eva Scully, a Home Economics teacher at Glendale Union High School], anyway there wasn’t enough merchandise on the shelves to do any good, actually. [I had] to restock it, clean it up a little, paint it some. We had a meat market that had a good butcher in there. By the way, that same butcher, a fellow by the name of Wilbur Thompson, if you know any old timers in town, they know him because he cut meat for all of us. He stayed with me for 38 years until he retired. [Laughter]
JA: Wow!
JC: Technically, he ran the meat market and I ran the grocery part.
JA: He’s the kind of partner you want.
JC: When we moved across in 1961, where the City Hall is, it was a bigger store and then we went to self service, before it was all over the counter. There have been a lot of improvements in the grocery business from those years. When I first went in there, the produce department consisted of lettuce crates with butcher paper on top. We didn’t have any refrigeration for the produce. You went to the market every morning and you brought in the produce for the day. Then in the evening, what was left over you had to move all of it out into the walk-in to keep it cold. The next morning you weeded out what was good and put in the new stuff. Later on I bought, I think it was about four or five years later on, we brought in our first produce case. I think our first produce case was about from there over to about here [gesturing]. It had doors on the bottom and it had big sliding [doors] and it really kept the vegetables right. Better than what they have now a days.
JA: Oh?
JC: Because it had big huge sliding doors. You could put lettuce in there and two weeks later it would still be crisp!
JA: Wow!
JC: You see now a days, they are open and the stuff just dries out. Half the time they don’t spray often enough, so that is why the vegetables get dehydrated.
JA: Yes. Did you buy most of your produce locally?
JC: I used to go down to the market in Phoenix. You know where they are putting the stadium [America West Arena] for the [Phoenix] Suns? In down town Phoenix?
JA: Give me a crossroad.
JC: I think it is Washington, well, it is Madison actually, and about Third Street. [Do] you know where that is?
JA: Yes, right by the Greyhound [Depot].
JC: Right south of it, to the right, is the new Suns stadium [Arena].
JA: Okay.
JC: It is already half way up.
JA: I haven’t been out there.
JC: You haven’t been out there in a long time? I was down there the other day. [Laughter] Right to the east of that was a produce market. The farmers would bring in their stuff and there was some produce houses. There was one they called the Banana House, they sold bananas mostly. Another one was the Potato House, and they only sold [potatoes]. So you bought what you needed and you brought it in [to your store]. It was about 20 years later that they started delivering the produce to the stores. You just ordered it [by] the telephone.
JA: Prior to your time some of the grocery [stores], like Ong’s Market and Sing’s would take groceries to people’s homes.
JC: Oh, we delivered.
JA: Did you deliver as well in the 1940s?
JC: We delivered up until about 1970 or 1975.
JA: Really?
JC: In fact, we delivered to the older people, as long as we were in business, until 1982. You didn’t make any money on it, because wages had gone up too high.
JA: You went out of business in 1982, is that right?
JC: I had to sell the property and the business. The business, I just closed it down. We sold all the property to the city [of Glendale]. They were going to condemn it and close it down. So we decided that we might as well sell it and get out of it. My brother [Thomas] owned the grocery store, the parking lot, the building for the bicycle place, the TV shop had the third building there on 58th , and then right behind us we had the building for the Mexican Pool Hall, and the building for the Mexican Bakery. We were thinking that one of these days we were going to enlarge the grocery store and tear that down. But it didn’t work out that way. The City wanted it.
JA: So that ended your grocery store business career?
JC: We have one—
JA: Do you?
JC: We have one in El Mirage, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. Have you ever been to El Mirage?
JA: Yes, a couple of times.
JC: Have you ever seen the shopping center?
JA: Yes, but I don’t remember it real vividly?
JC: We own the whole shopping center. My nephews and I, and it says Coury’s Market.
JA: Yes.
JC: On 19th Avenue and Osborne [Road] we have another one. It used to be a Bayless [Store].
JA: Yes, the old Bayless [Store].
JC: Right south of the Catholic Church.
JA: So you are still in it, then.
JC: Well, not me, the nephews are doing it.
JA: A couple of things, before we move on to other areas, first of all you mentioned this Mexican Pool Hall.
JC: Yes.
JA: That’s interesting to me in that, was it exclusively for Mexicans, or—
JC: No, it was a Mexican man who ran it.
JA: Okay.
JC: Anybody could go in there.
JA: Okay.
JC: But it was called the Mexican Pool Hall.
JA: It didn’t mean that it was a segregated pool hall?
JC: No, no, they didn’t have that segregated stuff [then]. Most of the Mexicans lived down behind the ice plant at that time, and a lot of them lived behind Sing’s Market. You know where Sing’s Market was? They lived in that area.
JA: Were you pretty good friends with the Sing’s and the Ong’s, and others that ran grocery [stores]? Did you all sort of discuss business?
JC: I knew them, but Ong, I think, liked to do a lot of betting and I never cared for that. The ones that we were friendly with were Volene Stockham and her husband [Carl]. By the way, is her husband still alive or has he passed away?
JA: The last time I talked to her was about three weeks ago, and he was still alive but he is not doing well.
JC: Stable then?
JA: Yes, [but] he doesn’t even hardly know her today.
JC: He was a nice fellow. [“Buster”] Foster [of Foster’s Grocery] was a nice fellow. The guy [Al] Jorgenson, that used to run J. C. Penney’s, we used to go hunting together. He liked to hunt.
JA: Did he sell out to Penney?
JC: He retired. Those were straight partnerships that they had, they started right after World War I. [Originally Penny’s had a different location east of the park. When The Toggery closed Penny’s moved into the location to which John is referring.]
Mr. J. C. Penney would come in once a year, and they would visit, and find out how they had done. If they made profit he would take his half and the other man would take the other half. He was quite a character, that J. C. Penny! He always liked the nickel cokes [Coca-Cola]. We used to have a nickel coke machine! [Laughter]
JA: He’d come in and get a nickel coke from you?
JC: He would come in and visit, too. He would ask how business was in the grocery store. That way he could judge how business was next door in his dry goods place. Later on, they formed a company that took over the stores and they didn’t have any more of those partnerships. They were just managers and the company owned [the stores].
JA: That’s when he really took off and started booming.
JC: Yes. When Jorgenson retired [the store was] moved north of the Valley [National] Bank. There was a place where the TV place used to be there. The big, long red building used to be there. I think J. C. Penney has most of that [building]. Later on I think they had part of the [building] where The Salvation Army was. [Across the alley from the clothing store was their linens and bedding. That is St. Vincent de Paul.]In the back they had more of their bigger stuff. From there they moved to the Valley West Mall.
JA: Okay. This is just a study for me in the culture of the Lebanese folks. It is interesting to me that so many of you came to Ray and to the mining towns.
JC: They went to the mining towns because [that was] where the main businesses were. Phoenix didn’t amount to anything. Phoenix was just a little farm town. The same thing [was true] of Glendale in the 1920s, it didn’t have much. Even in 1940, when I came in, [they had] less than 5,000 [residents]. By the way, El Mirage has 5,000 [residents] now.
JA: It does? It is like starting over again!
JC: Yes. It didn’t have very much.
JA: So you really selected those—
JC: That’s where the business was.
JA: Okay. How come so many of the Lebanese were merchants and storeowners.
JC: You didn’t take up ancient history, did you?
JA: No, I didn’t.
JC: Who were the merchants from the beginning of time?
JA: I suppose—
JC: The people of Lebanon that was the center of trade.
JA: Okay.
JC: That’s all they did, they brought in stuff and they sold it out. Most of the men were merchants. It was where Beirut, [Lebanon] is now, that all was the crossroads. They brought in the stuff from the Middle East and they shipped it to the West. They are the ones who brought it, warehoused it, and resold it.
JA: It has a long history then.
JC: They have a knack for it or something, I don’t know.
JA: Apparently, you all seemed to have done well in it. How did the people of Glendale respond to you coming in? Of course, your uncle had been here before, but was there open arm reception to Lebanese?
JC: They didn’t even know what [we] were. Nobody paid attention to what you were. You were just a merchant down the street.
JA: Okay.
JC: At that same time, back in 1904 and 1905, they were also killing off the Orthodox Russians. They were called the Greek Orthodox. Do you know about churches? They are Christians, too. All these Russians came over [to] the westside of town, because of the persecution from the Turks. In fact, that’s how the United States got a lot of the people. They were abused in some other place and they came over here.
JA: Interesting perspective. Did you socialize at all with the Russian Community?
JC: I knew most of them, yes. There is Pete Tolmachoff lives over here, across from [Dr. Phillip and Bess] Rice’s. He had a brother, he has moved to California now, and I knew him. There was an Annie Uraine and her husband. One of my milkmen, worked for Webster’s Dairy [Creamery] that used to be here. He was a Popoff, his last name was Popoff.
There are a whole lot of Tolmachoff’s. There is one white bearded one called Mike. He used to come into the store and he would bring me fresh butter that he had made from his cows. He would say, “Johnny, I’ve got six pounds of butter. How much are you going to give me for them this time?” [Laughter] We’d negotiate and then we’d put them out and people liked it because it was pure butter. Yes, there were a lot of them.
Mary Tolmachoff married a German fellow. Let’s see if you can guess who it was.
JA: John F. Long?
JC: Yes, John F. Long. [Laughter] Mary Tolmachoff was Pete Tolmachoff’s sister, if you want to follow the lineage. Yes, that’s his sister. The Russians were never afraid of work.
JA: Do you have a lot of bartering like that? Where someone would bring in butter and someone else figs, or whatever, did you do a lot of bartering in the grocery business?
JC: Not bartering, but you bought, like for about 20 years they used to have a chicken farm here. You know where Bonsall Park is?
JA: Yes.
JC: There was a chicken farm that was a U. S. Experimental Station. It was run by a fellow by the name of Burt Heywang. They ran different experiments on [the farm]. Nothing wrong with the eggs, good fresh eggs. I used to buy all the eggs from him and we sold them out. I bet we used to sell, some times, as many as 50 crates of eggs a week. They came from all over [the valley] for eggs.
That chicken farm used to be an ostrich farm at one time.
JA: No kidding? [Inaudible]
JC: Later on they bought it. A fellow by the name of Bonsall, [David Harrison “Harry”, Sr.] he had—
JA: Southwest Flour and Feed?
JC: Yes. He and a bunch of other guys bought that farm and later on they [either] sold it or gave it to the Federal Government, so they could put the experimental farm there. The experiments were done between the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the chicken farm. At one time they used to feed the chickens cottonseed oil mixed with a little feed to see what effect it would have on them. It would lighten up the yolk, [the eggs] would have a real light yolk.
JA: No kidding?
JC: Yes. He was trying to find out why you couldn’t feed cottonseed meal to chickens. When he fed the cottonseed meal to the chickens the eggs would be rotten. They experimented and experimented. He used to come over, or I would go over to his place, and we would sit down and visit. He told me that they found out that cottonseed had some stuff that they called gossypol. They didn’t know what to do with it, but they took it out of the cottonseed, and then you could feed [it]. Later on they found out that they could use it for people so they wouldn’t have children.
[Gossypol is derived from cottonseed oil that lowers sperm production.]
JA: Oh, no kidding?
JC: They never used it here in the United States, but China used it for years, before we used it here. Some way or another, he told me, “We tell them about it, but nobody uses it.” The gossypol out of the cottonseed—
JA: For birth control.
JC: Sort of like a birth control, yes.
JA: I’ll be! They figured that out down here?
JC: Between here and the scientist down in Tucson.
JA: Did you purchase produce from the Japanese truck farmers in Glendale, or would they go down to Phoenix to sell and you would go down to Phoenix to buy, and you wouldn’t do purchasing—
JC: Some of them had some, but they didn’t have that much.
JA: What do you mean they didn’t have much?
JC: They would have tomatoes sometimes, and sometimes they wouldn’t have tomatoes. You couldn’t run all over. Sometimes they brought you tomatoes when they wanted to sell [them] so you bought some. In fact we still do. Most of the time when they had it, they would take it down to the market [and] you would see them there anyway. It wouldn’t be worth their while to bring just five crates of tomatoes for a small store.
JA: Yes.
JC: But now a days, for example, we have been selling cantaloupe, two kinds of watermelons, seedless and the regular ones. We get them from Harquahala and Aguila. Do you know where that is, on the other side of Wickenburg, [Maricopa County, Arizona]?
JA: Yes, we used to hunt out there. It is a long drive!
JC: Yes. They haul the cantaloupes in big cardboard [boxes]. We bought grapes [from] a local guy who had grapes. Those were the best grapes because they let them ripen up until they turn yellowish. Those Thompson Seedless [grapes], they were as sweet as sugar then! You can’t ship them because they will go to pieces.
JA: Yes.
JC: But you take them out and put them, they are really good then! We were selling, for about three weeks, close to maybe 100 crates a day, in the two stores.
JA: Wow!
JC: Those big cardboard [boxes] the [store] that was selling the most was the one in Phoenix. He was selling two of big tubs of, I don’t know if you have ever seen them. They take them out and put them right down on the floor and people can pick out from there what they want. Those sell out [and] that is local stuff. But some of the other stuff you can’t.
JA: During World War II you had rationing and shortages. Did those affect your grocery business, and if so, how, and how did you compensate for all of that?
JC: There wasn’t any meat. You very seldom could get any meat at all. My butcher had a little farm there on 75th and Grand [Avenue]. There is a shopping center in there now that has been empty since they built it.
JA: Yes, I know the one.
JC: That was his farm. He put pigs in there. He had as many as 300 pigs at one time. We would kill them all and sell them to the stores, so we had pork. He had a lot of friends who [we could] buy a beef from. He used to work for an outfit by the name of Tovera’s [Meat Packing Company]. I don’t know if you have heard of them, or not.
JA: No, I haven’t.
JC: They had a slaughterhouse on East Van Buren [in Phoenix]. You know where that castle [Tovera Castle] is right next to that big slaughterhouse?
[END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE TWO]
JC: First we bought one that had closed down. It was sponsored under the Associated Grocers. I don’t know if you if you have ever heard of them?
JA: Oh, yes. You bought it or the Association did?
JC: This was separate. All the meat guys put in money. I put in $5,000. and there were maybe 30, 40, or 50 guys who put in $5,000. They would kill the beef and we would have beef [in the stores]. The only thing wrong with that was that we had to sell part of it to the [United States] Army. So they kept on taking more and we wouldn’t get our money out of the Army. [It was] like pulling teeth. Half of the time they cheated us out of a bunch of it. Then they went broke. So each of us put another $5,000 and we got one on 7th Street and the riverbed, another slaughterhouse was there. They ran that for two or three years and that went broke. By that time the war was over and we were starting to get meat from the regular packinghouses.
JA: So it was really tough to get meat?
JC: Yes, especially bacon. At Luke Field [Luke Air Force Base, Glendale, Arizona], they would send them slab bacon and hams. They couldn’t use all of them. They had to empty their walk-ins [refrigerators], otherwise they wouldn’t get their new quota. So lots of the guys were bringing in slabs of bacon and ham to the store and ask us if we would slice it for them. I remember our butcher sliced hundreds of those slabs of bacon, or sliced the hams on the power saw for them. But meat was scarce, the Army [government] got everything they needed and more, and they wasted it.
JA: So these people, who would be bringing you the bacon and ham, would be the officers?
JC: No, they were some of the guys that dug it out of the garbage. The slabs had the original paper on it and they would throw them away in the garbage. They’d tell the guys that they would be throwing away some hams and bacon so if you guys want it. Anyway, but that’s the way it was.
JA: There wasn’t any way that you, as merchants, could get that surplus?
JC: No, there wasn’t any way that you could get it.
JA: That was too bad.
JC: We would get so many pounds of bacon already sliced. My butcher was having so much trouble, that he started what he called the Bacon List. You put your name on this pad. He got 12 pounds of bacon. Each one on the list got a pound and they would cross their name off the list. If they wanted some more they could put their on the bottom of the list.
JA: Sure.
JC: That’s the way we solved the bacon problem, the best [way] we could. Every once in awhile, we would get some bacon.
JA: Get enough for everybody?
JC: Oh, you never got enough for everybody, but everybody got something, sooner or later.
JA: What were some of the other things that you couldn’t keep or get in the store?
JC: We had plenty of bread, plenty of flour. I don’t know, it mostly was the meat. Coffee got a little short sometimes.
JA: Would you characterize your business as prosperous during the wartime?
JC: Yes, it was all right. I got a liquor license for it in 1941, I think it was. That’s what was scarce, whiskey.
JA: Oh was it?
JC: I would get 25 cases of whiskey and then I would just bring out five cases. The guys from Luke Field would come in and all line up. All we could get were fifths. So you would sell one fifth to [each] of the guys.
JA: That was probably very lucrative, wasn’t it?
JC: In a way yes, and in a way no. The only [brand] you could get, mostly, was Schenley’s. They called it Black Label Schenley’s and there was one made out of potatoes because sugar was scarce. You know where the Thunderbird School is?
JA: Yes.
JC: They grew a lot of potatoes there, and they would put them in and chopped and dried them, and shipped them to make whiskey.
JA: Oh?
JC: Another thing wrong with it, they used to be able to get gin from Mexico and tequila from Mexico. You had to buy one case of gin or tequila in order to get one case of whiskey. So once the five cases of whiskey were gone, the only thing left on the shelf [would be] the gin or tequila. Those we sold at cost in order to get rid of it, because we had so much of it. So you didn’t come out as good on it, actually. After the war was over [we] started getting more whiskey.
JA: Did the people in the community drink a lot too, or was it just the soldiers [airmen]?
JC: People in the community were just like people in any other community, they drank!
JA: What were some of the social things that you did as a part of the community?
JC: They had deals right there in the middle of the park [Murphy Park].
JA: Like—
JC: Like Cinco de Mayo [and] the Sixteenth of September. They still have it, don’t they?
JA: Yes.
JC: They used to close off 58th, where the telephone company is, and the Palomino [Jewelry Store] and stuff is there. They would close that off and that was a place where the people could dance. Glendale Avenue would have to be kept open because it was designated as a military road to Luke Field at that time. That [street] and Northern Avenue, I think. They had dances in there and all kinds of food that was sold. They had little stands, they still do now, don’t they?
JA: I believe—
JC: Or haven’t they started yet? They usually have one around the 16 of September.
JA: That will be coming up in two weeks.
JC: That will be coming up soon. I don’t know if they will have it here or if they will have it over, they used to have it downtown. They used to have the Christmas Tree, it used to be there on the corner across from the gym that they closed. I don’t know if it is still there or if they killed it.
JA: The tree?
JC: Yes, I think they killed it when they built City Hall.
JA: That would be my guess, I don’t recall seeing it.
JC: It was wired up and it had the power going into it. It had plugs right in it.
JA: Huge!
JC: On Easter, sometimes in the old days, they used to have the candle parade from there going over to the churches.
JA: Oh, really?
JC: I don’t know if they have that any more, or not.
JA: I don’t know. I never heard of it.
JC: I don’t go downtown too much, anymore.
JA: No?
JC: After 40 years of going downtown, I don’t go down!
JA: Was there anything that you as business people sponsored in Glendale, an activity, or a club, or whatever?
JC: They sponsored everything that went [on]. Usually the grocery stores had to ante up a little for it. You knew that, didn’t you?
JA: No, I didn’t.
JC: They’d come in, “If you can’t give money, can you give so much of this.” So many potatoes, or some much of this, or so many cases of soda pop. You always do, they still do. The same thing is going on in El Mirage.
JA: Sort of a community service?
JC: Yes. Out there we sponsor the baseball team, I think it is, one baseball team every year. The old town is a big city now!
JA: If you [can], summarize in a couple of statements, why you enjoyed Glendale.
JC: People were friendly. You knew everybody up and down the line, merchants and customers. In fact, the other day I was paying my water bill and I saw two or three of my customers there. They stopped and wanted to talk. You know where you pay your water bill in that little room? One of them was telling me that his wife died, and she was one of my old customers. A lot of the poor people that were here, are now living in El Mirage. I see them out there—
JA: Really?
JC: —in the store.
JA: Why is that? Do you have any idea?
JC: What?
JA: Why they moved to El Mirage?
JC: It is too expensive to live up here. They can’t afford these houses. Out there they have quite a few government houses that they rent. Some one them are renting houses for as low as $45.00 a month.
JA: Wow!
JC: They pay according to their income. You can’t even get anything over here for $45.00 a month.
JA: You can’t rent a room.
JC: This woman is a widow, she has one or two kids, and she gets food stamps, and she has one of those houses that the government furnishes them. They have medical facilities out there too, that don’t cost anything. They get by better, I suppose, than Glendale [people]. I don’t where they would go? Where do the poor people go for medical facilities here?
JA: I don’t know, unless they can be part of these group plans, like HMO’s [Health Maintenance Organization].
JC: They don’t have money for that.
JA: I don’t think so. So I don’t know.
JC: Out there they have one outfit that is a family deal and certain times of the week a dentist comes in and [does] free work; and certain times of the week there this doctor comes in and that doctor comes in. They check the people.
JA: That is great.
JC: I think it is all free.
JA: That is great.
JC: They are regular doctors who charge money in other places.
JA: They charge enough somewhere else to pay for their services down there!
JC: No, maybe not. Maybe it is just their way of donating to the—
JA: Civic duty.
JC: Civic duty, to the people, to the less fortunate ones.
JA: I was going to say that I think that is a better welfare system than when the government gets itself involved and tries to do it all for us.
JC: [Laughter]
JA: Let me ask some questions here. They have a biographical sheet and some of this may be a little bit monotonous, but maybe you can help me fill this in and give me some of the dates.
When were you born and in what city and state?
JC: [I was born] in Ray, Arizona, March 25, 1917.
JA: Right in the middle of [World War I], or we hadn’t quite gotten into it yet.
JC: Yes, I think they had gotten into it by that time.
JA: Date and place of your marriage?
JC: I never got married.
JA: Never? The date you arrived in Glendale?
JC: I think it was in May of 1940.
JA: Names of the schools that you attended and the date you graduated. You went to Ray Elementary?
JA: No, Sonora Elementary.
JC: Sonora Elementary and Ray High School.
JA: What year did you graduate from high school, do you [remember]?
JC: In 1936. That was before you were born!
JA: A couple of years!
JC: What?
JA: A couple of years! [Laughter] And any college?
JC: University [of Arizona], [in] Tucson. [I] graduated in 1940, I think it was May of 1940.
JA: You came straight from the U of A to start your shop!
JC: Two weeks! Two weeks after I graduated I was in the grocery business. [Laughter] Sounds silly!
JA: Wish I had done it!
JC: I was going to go to work for the Valley [National] Bank. I had a chance to go to the Valley [National] Bank in Phoenix or the Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson. But they both paid $75. a month.
JA: Did you do better than that [in the] grocery [business]?
JC: Yes.
JA: Good. I would have expected that. Any organizations, whether fraternal, civic, or social that you were a part of? Religious affiliation?
JC: Catholic.
JA: Military service?
JC: No, I was called to the thing [the draft board] and I went down for the physical. When I was 13 I [was] shot with a shotgun and the right eye doesn’t work. I can’t see out of it. I have 400 vision.
JA: Wow!
JC: I wanted to go in and I just about talked the guy in there in to [letting me go in], because they needed [men]. Then who [should be] down there but my eye doctor from Phoenix. “What are you doing here?” He told them, “What have you got [here]? This man can’t even see out of his right eye.” So he said you do something else for the good of the country instead of [fighting]. He said with men like you, your buddy will get killed. [Laughter] That’s what he told me!
JA: I’ll be.
JC: What?
JA: I’ll be. So they just let you go back to your business, or did you have to do some other service?
JC: No that was it.
JA: This is a question that I forgot to ask you. During the war times there were a lot of bond drives, scrap drives, and other kinds of drives. Did your grocery [store] get involved in any of that?
JC: We got involved in all of those when they had them, all the grocery [stores] got involved in them.
JA: So that was just standard?
JC: It was a standard deal.
JA: Do you have any scrapbooks or photo albums that might show something or tell us something about Glendale?
JC: No.
JA: Pictures of buildings?
JC: I looked for them, but I don’t know who borrowed it, and I couldn’t find it. I had two brothers who were in the [United States] Army.
JA: Where did they serve?
JC: My brother Jimmy, who was a partner with me in the grocery store, he went into Europe as far as Germany, I think. He came back all right. I had a brother older than I am, by the name of Pete, he was on the B-29’s that were bombing Japan. He got killed. By the way, he was in the first group that went out.
JA: With [General James H.] Doolittle?
JC: No, no, those weren’t B-29’s.
JA: Those were B-24’s, that’s right.
JC: Yes.
JA: Okay.
JC: I’ll show you a book. The Army gave me a book on things.
JA: Oh, really?
JC: Yes. They lost three planes, I think. The first two they got rescued in the ocean and the [crew] on the third one got killed. So he never made it back. It was one or two weeks before the war ended. The last run was the run to Osaka, Japan. First they started off from India and they would fly over to China and that way. Later on they moved to a little island that they called Tinian. He was an engineer on a B-29.
JA: He didn’t fly one of the A-bomb [atomic] [planes]?
JC: No, he got killed two weeks before they dropped the first A-bomb.
JA: Sorry to hear that.
JC: Yes.
JA: What were your other brother and sisters names who lived in the Glendale area at anytime? Did all of you come and live here?
JC: One was Thomas Coury. He had a furniture store, where the gym was, for 40 some years.
JA: Do you know what his birth date is?
JC: No, I think it was [in] 1910, I’m not too sure. Then I have a sister that lives on Orangewood [Avenue].
JA: Her name is?
JC: Mary [Coury] Schneider.
JA: S-N-Y-E-D-E-R?
JC: No, S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R.
JA: Okay, and her birth date?
JC: I think it was 1904. She is 87.
JA: Do you know the month and the day, by any chance?
JC: I think it was January 1, or January 2, 1904. [It was ] January 2, 1904.
JA: Did Jimmy or Pete ever live in Glendale?
JC: Yes, Jim lived on Orangewood [Avenue]. His wife still lives in the same house. His wife’s name is Margaret.
JA: Do you know Jimmy’s birth date?
JC: I think he was born in 1921. I don’t remember what month it was.
JA: How about Pete? He is older than you are.
JC: Yes, Pete was born in 1915.
JA: Were you all born down in Ray, or the Sonora area?
JC: Yes, most of them, all except my sister Mary. She was born in Lebanon. My brother Tom was born in Bisbee [Cochise County, Arizona]. No, not Bisbee, what’s the name of it?
JA: Morenci?
JC: Morenci. The rest of them were born in Ray.
JA: What is your father’s name?
JC: Elias. E-L-I-A-S.
JA: Middle name?
JC: Thomas.
JA: His birth date, any idea?
JC: [In] 1882, I think. I think he was born in March, sometime, I don’t know.
JA: His occupation was dry goods store?
JC: Grocer, he was a grocer.
JA: He was a grocer. That’s right.
JC: And I was a grocer!
JA: And your uncle was—
JC: And my nephews are grocers! [Laughter]
JA: For some reason I latched on to your uncle dry goods store.
JC: My uncle was a dry goods man.
JA: Your mom’s full name?
JC: Gaeta. G-A-E-T-A.
JA: Okay, and her maiden name?
JC: Daou.
JA: Her birth date?
JC: I think it was 1884. I don’t know what month or [day].
JA: Did she ever have an occupation? Did she work occasionally?
JC: At times, the wives helped their husbands in the stores! [Laughter] And raised the kids!
JA: Is there anything extra that you could tell me about your uncle, and his family, and their store here in Glendale?
JC: No, they had that dry goods store. Later on they moved down across from the Valley [National] Bank. I think it is a flower shop now. [The Daou’s store was called the Boston Store.]
JA: Okay. He just maintained the same store, just different location?
JC: Yes, they changed from a complete dry goods store to a women’s clothing store, at the time they moved over there.
JA: Okay. This has been very interesting. I do appreciate your [time].
JC: I hope it helps some!
JA: Oh, it is [very helpful]. Businesses change so much.
JC: I’ll tell you who can tell you a lot of stuff, Volene Stockham.
JA: I have talked with Volene.
JC: You talked to her?
JA: We had a very good time with her. We talked some about their butcher store. Her brother-in-law [Paul Stockham], I guess, was one of the early people who designed coolers.
JC: Oh yes, they made those straw [evaporative] coolers. He was one of the first ones to make them and he used to sell them.
JA: Yes. There is one house that still has one left on it. I went over to look at it, just to see what it looked like.
JC: It was just round, didn’t have the corners.
JA: Just a round mat all the way around. Really quite interesting.
JC: Yes.
JA: Neat lady, we had a good time with her.
JC: What?
JA: She’s a very neat lady.
JC: She’s a nice lady.
JA: She really is.
JC: Yes, they [were] good people. [Buster] Foster was a pretty nice fellow, but the Stockham’s were more friendly.
JA: Is Foster still alive?
JC: Who?
JA: Mr. Foster?
JC: Yes, he lives in Sun City, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: Does he? Do you know what—
JC: He still owns that—
JA: Still owns the building?
JC: Yes. That building where the finance place is closed.
JA: What is his first name? Do you know?
JC: He used to go by initials. It was G, or J. R., or R. J., I don’t know.
JA: They used to call him “Buzz”, didn’t they? “Buzz” Foster, was that his nickname? [A. B. “Buster” Foster]
JC: He was older than I am, so I always called him Mr. Foster.
JA: As it should be!
[END OF TAPE TWO – SIDE ONE]

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN COURY
Today is August 29, 1991, I am Jerry Abbitt and I will be interviewing John Coury.
JA: Why don’t you start by taking me through how your family ended up here in the Arizona area and eventually to Glendale, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. What was part of the transition to bring you here from where you were originally?
JC: It was the Turkish war that started back in the middle of the 1800s. If you studied your history you have heard about the Moors, which were the Turks, that came in through North Africa up to Spain. The other group went across Greece up to about the middle of Europe. They were Muslims. There were Catholics in Lebanon. Lebanon was not Lebanon then, it was Syria. Lebanon wasn’t declared Lebanon until 1930 when they created it. It was a part of Syria.
They started killing the Christians. My folks were Christians. There were Armenians, and they were Christians, too. They started killing them off. My dad and mom [Elias Thomas and Gaeta (Daou) Coury] were just newly married and they killed some of their relatives, so dad took off first. Well, dad’s brother [in-law, Mansour Daou] came over first. He went over to Canada. After he was settled in Canada, he brought my grandmother [over], my dad’s mother, and they stayed in Canada. My dad went to Canada, too, but he didn’t like the winters out there. As I was telling you, my mother’s brother had come [to the United States] and he ended up in Morenci, [Graham County, Arizona] which at that time was a mining town. Still is, I suppose.
JA: Yes.
JC: He told them how nice the weather was down here. He started off in the fall of 1906, I believe, and there weren’t any airplanes at that time [laughter] and the trains were far and few. There were not many. So part of [the trip] he came across the place they call Port Huron, [Michigan]. That is between Canada and the United States. Then he came down part on stagecoach, to the where they had trains. He ended up in Chicago, [Illinois] and from there, from there were trains. But like dad said the trains would only go 50 or 100 miles at the most, then they wouldn’t run again for another three or four weeks. The same train would go back [to the original point], or you couldn’t get passage on it. So it took him until next spring to get down here. He ended up in Holbrook, [Navajo County, Arizona]. From Holbrook he came down by stagecoach. He came down as far as Tempe, [Maricopa County, Arizona] and from Tempe, the copper mine had started the railroad line that was coming up towards Phoenix, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: Yes.
JC: From there he took that one over there. Anyway, when he got there, most of the people out there were merchants.
JA: From out there meaning in Morenci?
JC: From Lebanon.
JA: Okay.
JC: Most of them are merchants. For example, you have heard of Fred Koory, who was running for Governor [of Arizona] and didn’t make it? Well, his [grand] dad [George Koory] is a Lebanese. He is a Coury too, but the spelling of the name, by the way, depends upon the man who brings you in.
JA: Really?
JC: The immigration man. Because the names are spelled in Arabic and the immigration man doesn’t know how to write in Arabic. So what does he do? He spells it the best way that he can or [as] he thinks it should be. That other man, Fred Koory, they put K-O-O-R-Y. I think in my dad’s case, it was an Irishman. They spell Coury with a C over in Ireland. So he put C-O-U-R-Y. That’s the way he made it. [My dad] figured that it didn’t make any difference, they were making a new start in a new country anyway. So the name didn’t make any difference.
Now you wanted to know which of the guys came in from Lebanon. There was my uncle, Daou who later moved over here to Glendale.
JA: What’s his first name?
JC: His first name was Masour, M-A-N-S-O-U-R, I can’t spell it just exactly. His last name was Daou.
JA: Okay.
JC: Daou, by the way in Arabic, means light.
JA: Light?
JC: Yes.
JA: So he brought the light to Glendale.
JC: He came in and had a dry-goods store, right down town. You know where they sell pictures now, what do they call it? They had an article about them having a showing. It is the same building that he was in. Right south—
JA: South of the park?
JC: By the park, yes, and what do they call it?
JA: As I was driving by today I was trying to memorize the names of everything, but I didn’t get them.
JC: That one I think they have color pictures of colored artists. My dad ended up in a place they call Ray, Arizona. He started a little grocery store there. In 1912 the whole town burned down.
JA: The town of Ray?
JC: Yes.
JA: Okay.
JC: The wooden sidewalks and everything burned down, and so did his store. He moved across the river, it was a creek and they called it Mineral Creek. He bought an adobe building there and put in a grocery store. At that time there was an outfit by the name of Steinfield’s. Have you ever heard of Steinfield’s in Tucson, [Pima County, Arizona]?
JA: No, what were they?
JC: They had a branch over here in Ray and later on they moved to Tucson and they became like Goldwater’s in Tucson, like the Goldwater’s here in Phoenix.
JA: So they got started in Ray?
JC: I think they got started in Ray. Dad used to buy stuff from them. They had a wholesale house. The little town of Sonora was on the Mexican side of the mining town. They were talking about people who were coming in from Lebanon. There was Saba’s, a western store. I see they have a new branch over here on 75th [Avenue] and on the south side there is a Safeway store and right next to it, let’s see north of Olive would be Peoria—
JA: Peoria?
JC: It is on Peoria and I think 75th there’s a big shopping center on the four corners.
JA: I think so, it has been a long time since I have been up that far.
JC: Then on the southwest corner, I came in through there because they have Olive all blocked where they are putting in new pipes, anyway, they have a Saba’s there. Anyway, they were down there [in Ray]. There was a [inaudible], they are from Mesa, [Maricopa County, Arizona] now. There were the Bashas, Basha’s grocery store, they were down there. There were some Karams.
JA: Karams?
JC: Karams, yes.
JA: Is that a store?
JC: Yes. Basha’s sold their dry goods store to Karams in 1929. They moved next to Chandler, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. What was the name of it?
JA: Gilbert?
JC: It was around there some place. They started a grocery store. Before that they were in dry goods only . There were the Gannons. They have Jordan’s Restaurants in Phoenix. They are Lebanonese, too.
JA: Okay.
JC: Who else was there? There was some Elias but I don’t know if they have any businesses in Phoenix now.
JA: What did they run, what was their business?
JC: They had dry goods stores out there.
JA: All of these were in Ray?
JC: In Sonora. After Ray burned down, they all moved over to Sonora. The company started building it up. Ray wasn’t that large, Sonora was larger. Some of them moved to Superior, [Pinal County, Arizona]. The ones that ended up here in Glendale were the Koorys, K-O-O-R-Y, he had a market. You know where Sergeant’s Market is?
JA: No.
JC: He built Sergeant’s Market, but he had another market before that, about a block down on the eastside, [Fifth Avenue Grocery] which is now an empty lot. There was a Chinaman, by the name of Sing [George Wong Sing]—
JA: George Sing.
JC: He had the market across the street. Let’s see who else was there? There was my uncle, Daou. I didn’t come in until 1940. I graduated from [the University of Arizona] Tucson. I laugh about that! Dad used to make fun of me. He said, “You went four years to college and got a degree in banking and you are going to get paid $75. a month. Is that all? You could sell peanuts on the corner and make more money than that!”
We were walking down Glendale Avenue from 58th over this way, and where that little karate place was, there was a little grocery store. The man [James Scully] had died and the widow was trying to run it and she was having a rough time. It was for sale. Before two days were over, I ended up buying that store. Dad bought it for me. That’s how I got started in the grocery business.
JA: Really?
JC: I was there for 21 years in that one spot. Then we bought this old building that used to be known as the Ryder Building. I think it is the one that they tore down that used to be the grocery store. We remodeled it and moved in there. Now Safeway was there before us.
JA: What street are you on, what crossroads?
JC: You know where the City Hall is?
JA: Yes.
JC: That 58th Drive [First Avenue] used to go through.
JA: Okay, so it was the building that they tore down in order to build the City Hall.
JC: The City Hall is there now.
JA: Okay.
JC: Do you know Mrs. Stockham?
JA: Yes, Volene?
JC: Volene Stockham, she and her husband, [Carl], had the meat market [Stockham’s Meat Market was located in the back of Foster’s Grocery Store], you remember that place that I told you they were selling pictures—
JA: Yes.
JC: Then there is a print shop, where the print shop is used to be a pool hall and a barber shop in the front window.
JA: Okay.
JC: Then right next door used to be a finance place. It has been empty for awhile now. Mrs. Stockham and her husband had a meat market in half of that [building] and there was a guy by the name of [Buster] Foster.
JA: Yes, Foster’s Grocery.
JC: Right next to it. Mrs. Stockham and her husband had one side of it and Foster had the other side. Right next to it was a bigger building, I think it was 50 feet, was JC Penneys. There was a fellow by the name of [Al] Jorgenson, a veteran, who was in partners with Mr. J. C. Penney. [Those] were some of the original stores. The guy and J. C. Penney were 50-50 partners. Then right next door to that one is the karate place. That’s where I was with [my] grocery store.
JA: Okay.
JC: Then right next to that one was a fellow by the name of Biaett [D. H.] and his wife. [The Federated Store]
JA: Biaett?
JC: Yes, Biaett. His son [Kenneth] was a lawyer [who] practiced law here in Glendale for 25 or 30 years. I think he just retired. He had a Federated Store. They used to call them Federated Stores. Right next door to that one, where there is a little restaurant, what do they call that little Mexican restaurant?
JA: [I don’t know.]
JC: You don’t live in Glendale then?
JA: No, I live just on the outside of it. I’m trying to walk through town though.
JC: That’s what I am doing, I’m walking you through that one block. There is a Mexican restaurant there. It is one of the retired policemen and his wife that have a restaurant there. Okay, there was a fellow by the name of Summers [Gene]. But before Summers there was this guy who was Justice of Peace of Glendale [who] had a dry goods store there, a men’s store, just for men’s clothing. I forget his name. [Frank Carden] Later on he sold it to this fellow by the name of Summers and he had a men’s store for quite awhile. Later on he died and [it] was closed up. Then a pawnshop [was there] for quite awhile. Right in the corner where the gym was that they just closed up—
JA: Okay.
JC: Originally there was a Newman’s Department Store. Before that there was a bank [Glendale State Bank] that went broke in the depression of 1921. Then a fellow by the name of Newman put a department store in. Later on he sold out [to Carroll Wood for Wood’s Drug Store] and Ryan Evans [purchased Wood’s from its current owner, D. H. “Red” Wilson] put a drugstore there. Ryan Evans had it for quite awhile. There was a fellow by the name of “Red” Wilson that used to run that and he bought [sold] the store [to] Ryan Evans. He [ran it] as a drugstore for quite awhile.
JA: It seems to me like there was an awful lot of dry goods stores and grocery stores in that little area, given what you described it.
JC: That was the whole town, the whole town!
JA: A lot of competition.
JC: Going back east, on the eastside on the next block, the houses started where the Valley [National] Bank— [Chase]
JA: Yes.
JC: There was a two-story house there. There was where the doctor lived. [Dr. Robert Franklin] Where the Telephone Company is was another two-story house and there was another doctor there. [Dr. J. M. Pearson] But that was the whole town! Well, it was a small town.
JA: Now what time period are we talking about? Is this in 1940 when you came?
JC: I came in 1940, but I went back further than 1940 on some of [what I told you] to give you a history of each building as you come up. Across the street there was an Ever Ready Drug Store [Glendale Pharmacy is what he is referring to. Ever Ready was on a different corner]. That was [on the] south side of The First National Bank building. Is that what it is now? Where the lawyer [Richard Coffinger] is, the only building [sitting down] in the triangle? That was a dry goods store, no, it was a drug store then. Right next to it was a service station on the corner and there was a Western Auto Store there.
Later on the Western Auto Store moved across the street to where one of those antique shops is and it became a liquor store, the liquor department for the drug store. [“Doc” Jones’ Glendale Pharmacy]
JA: Really?
JC: That Western Auto Store and service station was owned by a guy by the name of Whitney, Joe Whitney and his brother [partner, Vic Brooks]. I don’t know if you ever heard of them?
JA: Yes. Would that have been a Firestone or a Western Auto?
JC: Maybe it was a Firestone Store, [on the corner of S. First and Grand. It was owned by Marion “Mutt” Whitney.] I don’t know which. [Vic Brooks and Joe Whitney owned the Western Auto on the westside of the street and the Brooks and Whitney Auto Parts Store on the eastside.]
JA: I believe they owned the Firestone, if you are referring to the same Whitneys that I—
JC: Maybe that’s it, then. Maybe it is the Firestone Store. Now, on this side of the street, right on the corner was a five and dime store. I forget what her name was. [Evans] Later on she started Youngtown, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: No kidding?
JC: She had a dry goods store and she built a big house in Youngtown and a lot of her friends wanted to come in and live around and she had a house with a lot of grass and I think a swimming pool. So she sort of started it.
JA: Oh?
JC: On this side of the street there was Ladda’s Café, a Greek fellow had it. Right next to it was a barbershop and an optometrist. The optometrist was [Dr. John] Fahrendorf. Maybe you have heard of Fahrendorf?
JA: He was my eye doctor when I was growing up.
JC: He first started right there across the street. In fact, if you ever see him, ask him about the time, that bank was a Valley [National] Bank, and some guy robbed the bank one time. Fahrendorf and a bunch [of guys] were involved in trying to catch him, I don’t know [for sure].
JA: Really!
JC: Yes, they caught the guy. He was just a poor guy who was half drunk and didn’t have any money and he had his rifle with him.
So across the alley from there was Sine Hardware, in that big two story building. That has been there since 1890 [1911] something.
JA: Big establishment. Would you have competed with them, given the dry goods nature of your business?
JC: No, mine was groceries. I had a grocery store.
JA: Okay, it was your uncle that was running the dry goods store when you first came. Would that have been in direct competition to Sine Hardware?
JC: No, Sine Hardware was hardware.
JA: Just hardware.
JC: The other one was clothing.
JA: Okay.
JC: They had shoes, hats, underwear, coats, suits, just soft goods, clothing. It isn’t like nowadays where they sell hardware and everything [else].
JA: I guess not, okay.
JC: Across the street, right behind where the City Hall is today, in the back part where the parking garage is, there was a Mexican Bakery there, a Mexican pool hall, and there was a second-hand hardware store there. On 58th, where it is closed, there was, what’s his name, he had a bicycle shop right across from the parking lot. Right next to it was a glass place. The glass place is now on 59th Avenue, about a block or so down on the west side. They moved from there to there.
JA: Okay.
JC: First it was an auto license place and then later on it became a TV place. [Ralph] Master’s TV [first it was Weigold’s Market and after World War II the license place and finally Master’s Radio and TV] had a place there. When they had to move over, they moved over north of the Valley [National] Bank. Now, I understand that they have moved way up north some place.
The City Hall was there and had two buildings. Right on the corner there was a hardware store. I forget the name of the hardware store [and farm implement company, O. S. Stapley’s.] There was a big hardware store there, right across from the [First United] Methodist Church.
Let’s see, on the other side of the park [Murphy Park] where [now is] First Security Pacific, [Bank of America] there was a law office there on the corner. Biaett and Bahde, he became mayor afterwards. [neither became Mayor.] They had law offices there. [Dr. Roger] Trueblood had a home and an office right there. [Trueblood’s office was in the former home and office of Dr. Denninger.] The print shop [Valley Printers which had published The Glendale Herald was next to Trueblood’s.] that is over on, right next to the, north [south] of the Sage There is a dentist there now and a print shop. [He is referring to Pueblo Publishing and the dentist’s office was the new offices of Dr. Roger, Dr. Roger K. and Dr. Craig Trueblood. Thee Trueblood’s moved from the Glenn Drive location to these offices on 59th Ave..]
JA: Okay.
JC: He was next to Trueblood’s place. Right on the northeast corner of the park, right across the street, was Roonie Slack’s Service Station.
JA: Yes, Roonie Slack.
JC: Roonie Slack, I don’t know if you remember him or not.
JA: Yes, I have interviewed with him.
JC: Let’s see, what else. That’s about the most of it. On the east side there was a movie picture house, [The El Rey] Betts Insurance [Betts and Traubel moved into the theater building when the theater closed.] and, I don’t know if you remember Betts Insurance or not.
JA: Yes.
JC: Right on the south [north] side of the corner was the ice cream place. I forget what the name of it was. [Upton’s] Maybe you can ask somebody.
JA: Okay. As I have listened to you describe—
JC: I am describing around the park [Murphy Park].
[END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE ONE]
JC: We went around the park area. On the south side of the park there was a, right on the corner where Miller Shoe Store is, there was a Valenzuela Department Store, a dry goods store [Leonard Valenzuela’s El Paso Store]. Right next to it was Henri Sanchez’ Jewelry Store. On the east side of the park was The Glendale News. A fellow by the name of “Bill” [William] Ryan used to run it.
JA: “Bill” Ryan?
JC: Yes, he passed away, he was up in his years. He ran the newspaper and everything.
JA: What was the atmosphere like with all of you business people, what kind of interaction did you have as the business community of Glendale in those early years?
JC: It was friendly and a lot of people, most of them, came downtown. For example, we didn’t open up [on] Sundays. Grocery stores didn’t open up on Sundays.
JA: Okay.
JC: So we opened up on Saturdays until 12:00, because a lot of people used to come in and buy their groceries. Then you’d put them in boxes, and then you’d put their name on it, and they usually went to the moving picture. When the picture show was out they would come over and their groceries were ready to go. Of course, in those days, [we] didn’t have all the frozen stuff, [or] ice cream, [and things] like that. It was mostly staples and stuff.
JA: That’s right. So your Saturday night was a work night, it wasn’t the enjoyment of the social atmosphere of Glendale?
JC: The whole thing was social. The people coming in to trade with you. They didn’t rush in and rush out. They came in and they visited with you. You visited up and down the aisle with, “How’s everything?” and all this other stuff. Some of them, the ones you knew better, they wanted to talk more. A lot of them were farmers, some of them worked on farms. It was just a friendly town! By the way, when I came [here] in 1940 Glendale had about 5,000 people.
JA: Okay.
JC: [Then] the north edge of the town was Orangewood [Avenue]. The rest was farm country.
JA: Hard to believe, isn’t it?
JC: Yes. Going east, 51st was about the end of it, [that] was where the Sugar Beet Factory is now. That was a cotton compress. They had a place there where they baled the cotton. Where Cerreta [Candy Company] and those thrift shops are, and the mechanic shop, that was the place where they baled the cotton. Then after the war [World War II] started they closed that down and they put trailers there for the soldiers [airmen] to live in.
JA: Really? So that’s where they were located.
JC: They had a bunch of trailers in there.
JA: When you came in 1940, Glendale’s coming out of The Depression era, and getting ready naively, not knowing it yet, getting ready to move into the war era. What did you find in terms of the business here? Was it booming, was it slow, was it active?
JC: That store I took over was dead! It took me a year or so to build it up. The man [James Scully] had died in 1938 and Mrs., I forget her name, the widow [Eva Scully, a Home Economics teacher at Glendale Union High School], anyway there wasn’t enough merchandise on the shelves to do any good, actually. [I had] to restock it, clean it up a little, paint it some. We had a meat market that had a good butcher in there. By the way, that same butcher, a fellow by the name of Wilbur Thompson, if you know any old timers in town, they know him because he cut meat for all of us. He stayed with me for 38 years until he retired. [Laughter]
JA: Wow!
JC: Technically, he ran the meat market and I ran the grocery part.
JA: He’s the kind of partner you want.
JC: When we moved across in 1961, where the City Hall is, it was a bigger store and then we went to self service, before it was all over the counter. There have been a lot of improvements in the grocery business from those years. When I first went in there, the produce department consisted of lettuce crates with butcher paper on top. We didn’t have any refrigeration for the produce. You went to the market every morning and you brought in the produce for the day. Then in the evening, what was left over you had to move all of it out into the walk-in to keep it cold. The next morning you weeded out what was good and put in the new stuff. Later on I bought, I think it was about four or five years later on, we brought in our first produce case. I think our first produce case was about from there over to about here [gesturing]. It had doors on the bottom and it had big sliding [doors] and it really kept the vegetables right. Better than what they have now a days.
JA: Oh?
JC: Because it had big huge sliding doors. You could put lettuce in there and two weeks later it would still be crisp!
JA: Wow!
JC: You see now a days, they are open and the stuff just dries out. Half the time they don’t spray often enough, so that is why the vegetables get dehydrated.
JA: Yes. Did you buy most of your produce locally?
JC: I used to go down to the market in Phoenix. You know where they are putting the stadium [America West Arena] for the [Phoenix] Suns? In down town Phoenix?
JA: Give me a crossroad.
JC: I think it is Washington, well, it is Madison actually, and about Third Street. [Do] you know where that is?
JA: Yes, right by the Greyhound [Depot].
JC: Right south of it, to the right, is the new Suns stadium [Arena].
JA: Okay.
JC: It is already half way up.
JA: I haven’t been out there.
JC: You haven’t been out there in a long time? I was down there the other day. [Laughter] Right to the east of that was a produce market. The farmers would bring in their stuff and there was some produce houses. There was one they called the Banana House, they sold bananas mostly. Another one was the Potato House, and they only sold [potatoes]. So you bought what you needed and you brought it in [to your store]. It was about 20 years later that they started delivering the produce to the stores. You just ordered it [by] the telephone.
JA: Prior to your time some of the grocery [stores], like Ong’s Market and Sing’s would take groceries to people’s homes.
JC: Oh, we delivered.
JA: Did you deliver as well in the 1940s?
JC: We delivered up until about 1970 or 1975.
JA: Really?
JC: In fact, we delivered to the older people, as long as we were in business, until 1982. You didn’t make any money on it, because wages had gone up too high.
JA: You went out of business in 1982, is that right?
JC: I had to sell the property and the business. The business, I just closed it down. We sold all the property to the city [of Glendale]. They were going to condemn it and close it down. So we decided that we might as well sell it and get out of it. My brother [Thomas] owned the grocery store, the parking lot, the building for the bicycle place, the TV shop had the third building there on 58th , and then right behind us we had the building for the Mexican Pool Hall, and the building for the Mexican Bakery. We were thinking that one of these days we were going to enlarge the grocery store and tear that down. But it didn’t work out that way. The City wanted it.
JA: So that ended your grocery store business career?
JC: We have one—
JA: Do you?
JC: We have one in El Mirage, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. Have you ever been to El Mirage?
JA: Yes, a couple of times.
JC: Have you ever seen the shopping center?
JA: Yes, but I don’t remember it real vividly?
JC: We own the whole shopping center. My nephews and I, and it says Coury’s Market.
JA: Yes.
JC: On 19th Avenue and Osborne [Road] we have another one. It used to be a Bayless [Store].
JA: Yes, the old Bayless [Store].
JC: Right south of the Catholic Church.
JA: So you are still in it, then.
JC: Well, not me, the nephews are doing it.
JA: A couple of things, before we move on to other areas, first of all you mentioned this Mexican Pool Hall.
JC: Yes.
JA: That’s interesting to me in that, was it exclusively for Mexicans, or—
JC: No, it was a Mexican man who ran it.
JA: Okay.
JC: Anybody could go in there.
JA: Okay.
JC: But it was called the Mexican Pool Hall.
JA: It didn’t mean that it was a segregated pool hall?
JC: No, no, they didn’t have that segregated stuff [then]. Most of the Mexicans lived down behind the ice plant at that time, and a lot of them lived behind Sing’s Market. You know where Sing’s Market was? They lived in that area.
JA: Were you pretty good friends with the Sing’s and the Ong’s, and others that ran grocery [stores]? Did you all sort of discuss business?
JC: I knew them, but Ong, I think, liked to do a lot of betting and I never cared for that. The ones that we were friendly with were Volene Stockham and her husband [Carl]. By the way, is her husband still alive or has he passed away?
JA: The last time I talked to her was about three weeks ago, and he was still alive but he is not doing well.
JC: Stable then?
JA: Yes, [but] he doesn’t even hardly know her today.
JC: He was a nice fellow. [“Buster”] Foster [of Foster’s Grocery] was a nice fellow. The guy [Al] Jorgenson, that used to run J. C. Penney’s, we used to go hunting together. He liked to hunt.
JA: Did he sell out to Penney?
JC: He retired. Those were straight partnerships that they had, they started right after World War I. [Originally Penny’s had a different location east of the park. When The Toggery closed Penny’s moved into the location to which John is referring.]
Mr. J. C. Penney would come in once a year, and they would visit, and find out how they had done. If they made profit he would take his half and the other man would take the other half. He was quite a character, that J. C. Penny! He always liked the nickel cokes [Coca-Cola]. We used to have a nickel coke machine! [Laughter]
JA: He’d come in and get a nickel coke from you?
JC: He would come in and visit, too. He would ask how business was in the grocery store. That way he could judge how business was next door in his dry goods place. Later on, they formed a company that took over the stores and they didn’t have any more of those partnerships. They were just managers and the company owned [the stores].
JA: That’s when he really took off and started booming.
JC: Yes. When Jorgenson retired [the store was] moved north of the Valley [National] Bank. There was a place where the TV place used to be there. The big, long red building used to be there. I think J. C. Penney has most of that [building]. Later on I think they had part of the [building] where The Salvation Army was. [Across the alley from the clothing store was their linens and bedding. That is St. Vincent de Paul.]In the back they had more of their bigger stuff. From there they moved to the Valley West Mall.
JA: Okay. This is just a study for me in the culture of the Lebanese folks. It is interesting to me that so many of you came to Ray and to the mining towns.
JC: They went to the mining towns because [that was] where the main businesses were. Phoenix didn’t amount to anything. Phoenix was just a little farm town. The same thing [was true] of Glendale in the 1920s, it didn’t have much. Even in 1940, when I came in, [they had] less than 5,000 [residents]. By the way, El Mirage has 5,000 [residents] now.
JA: It does? It is like starting over again!
JC: Yes. It didn’t have very much.
JA: So you really selected those—
JC: That’s where the business was.
JA: Okay. How come so many of the Lebanese were merchants and storeowners.
JC: You didn’t take up ancient history, did you?
JA: No, I didn’t.
JC: Who were the merchants from the beginning of time?
JA: I suppose—
JC: The people of Lebanon that was the center of trade.
JA: Okay.
JC: That’s all they did, they brought in stuff and they sold it out. Most of the men were merchants. It was where Beirut, [Lebanon] is now, that all was the crossroads. They brought in the stuff from the Middle East and they shipped it to the West. They are the ones who brought it, warehoused it, and resold it.
JA: It has a long history then.
JC: They have a knack for it or something, I don’t know.
JA: Apparently, you all seemed to have done well in it. How did the people of Glendale respond to you coming in? Of course, your uncle had been here before, but was there open arm reception to Lebanese?
JC: They didn’t even know what [we] were. Nobody paid attention to what you were. You were just a merchant down the street.
JA: Okay.
JC: At that same time, back in 1904 and 1905, they were also killing off the Orthodox Russians. They were called the Greek Orthodox. Do you know about churches? They are Christians, too. All these Russians came over [to] the westside of town, because of the persecution from the Turks. In fact, that’s how the United States got a lot of the people. They were abused in some other place and they came over here.
JA: Interesting perspective. Did you socialize at all with the Russian Community?
JC: I knew most of them, yes. There is Pete Tolmachoff lives over here, across from [Dr. Phillip and Bess] Rice’s. He had a brother, he has moved to California now, and I knew him. There was an Annie Uraine and her husband. One of my milkmen, worked for Webster’s Dairy [Creamery] that used to be here. He was a Popoff, his last name was Popoff.
There are a whole lot of Tolmachoff’s. There is one white bearded one called Mike. He used to come into the store and he would bring me fresh butter that he had made from his cows. He would say, “Johnny, I’ve got six pounds of butter. How much are you going to give me for them this time?” [Laughter] We’d negotiate and then we’d put them out and people liked it because it was pure butter. Yes, there were a lot of them.
Mary Tolmachoff married a German fellow. Let’s see if you can guess who it was.
JA: John F. Long?
JC: Yes, John F. Long. [Laughter] Mary Tolmachoff was Pete Tolmachoff’s sister, if you want to follow the lineage. Yes, that’s his sister. The Russians were never afraid of work.
JA: Do you have a lot of bartering like that? Where someone would bring in butter and someone else figs, or whatever, did you do a lot of bartering in the grocery business?
JC: Not bartering, but you bought, like for about 20 years they used to have a chicken farm here. You know where Bonsall Park is?
JA: Yes.
JC: There was a chicken farm that was a U. S. Experimental Station. It was run by a fellow by the name of Burt Heywang. They ran different experiments on [the farm]. Nothing wrong with the eggs, good fresh eggs. I used to buy all the eggs from him and we sold them out. I bet we used to sell, some times, as many as 50 crates of eggs a week. They came from all over [the valley] for eggs.
That chicken farm used to be an ostrich farm at one time.
JA: No kidding? [Inaudible]
JC: Later on they bought it. A fellow by the name of Bonsall, [David Harrison “Harry”, Sr.] he had—
JA: Southwest Flour and Feed?
JC: Yes. He and a bunch of other guys bought that farm and later on they [either] sold it or gave it to the Federal Government, so they could put the experimental farm there. The experiments were done between the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the chicken farm. At one time they used to feed the chickens cottonseed oil mixed with a little feed to see what effect it would have on them. It would lighten up the yolk, [the eggs] would have a real light yolk.
JA: No kidding?
JC: Yes. He was trying to find out why you couldn’t feed cottonseed meal to chickens. When he fed the cottonseed meal to the chickens the eggs would be rotten. They experimented and experimented. He used to come over, or I would go over to his place, and we would sit down and visit. He told me that they found out that cottonseed had some stuff that they called gossypol. They didn’t know what to do with it, but they took it out of the cottonseed, and then you could feed [it]. Later on they found out that they could use it for people so they wouldn’t have children.
[Gossypol is derived from cottonseed oil that lowers sperm production.]
JA: Oh, no kidding?
JC: They never used it here in the United States, but China used it for years, before we used it here. Some way or another, he told me, “We tell them about it, but nobody uses it.” The gossypol out of the cottonseed—
JA: For birth control.
JC: Sort of like a birth control, yes.
JA: I’ll be! They figured that out down here?
JC: Between here and the scientist down in Tucson.
JA: Did you purchase produce from the Japanese truck farmers in Glendale, or would they go down to Phoenix to sell and you would go down to Phoenix to buy, and you wouldn’t do purchasing—
JC: Some of them had some, but they didn’t have that much.
JA: What do you mean they didn’t have much?
JC: They would have tomatoes sometimes, and sometimes they wouldn’t have tomatoes. You couldn’t run all over. Sometimes they brought you tomatoes when they wanted to sell [them] so you bought some. In fact we still do. Most of the time when they had it, they would take it down to the market [and] you would see them there anyway. It wouldn’t be worth their while to bring just five crates of tomatoes for a small store.
JA: Yes.
JC: But now a days, for example, we have been selling cantaloupe, two kinds of watermelons, seedless and the regular ones. We get them from Harquahala and Aguila. Do you know where that is, on the other side of Wickenburg, [Maricopa County, Arizona]?
JA: Yes, we used to hunt out there. It is a long drive!
JC: Yes. They haul the cantaloupes in big cardboard [boxes]. We bought grapes [from] a local guy who had grapes. Those were the best grapes because they let them ripen up until they turn yellowish. Those Thompson Seedless [grapes], they were as sweet as sugar then! You can’t ship them because they will go to pieces.
JA: Yes.
JC: But you take them out and put them, they are really good then! We were selling, for about three weeks, close to maybe 100 crates a day, in the two stores.
JA: Wow!
JC: Those big cardboard [boxes] the [store] that was selling the most was the one in Phoenix. He was selling two of big tubs of, I don’t know if you have ever seen them. They take them out and put them right down on the floor and people can pick out from there what they want. Those sell out [and] that is local stuff. But some of the other stuff you can’t.
JA: During World War II you had rationing and shortages. Did those affect your grocery business, and if so, how, and how did you compensate for all of that?
JC: There wasn’t any meat. You very seldom could get any meat at all. My butcher had a little farm there on 75th and Grand [Avenue]. There is a shopping center in there now that has been empty since they built it.
JA: Yes, I know the one.
JC: That was his farm. He put pigs in there. He had as many as 300 pigs at one time. We would kill them all and sell them to the stores, so we had pork. He had a lot of friends who [we could] buy a beef from. He used to work for an outfit by the name of Tovera’s [Meat Packing Company]. I don’t know if you have heard of them, or not.
JA: No, I haven’t.
JC: They had a slaughterhouse on East Van Buren [in Phoenix]. You know where that castle [Tovera Castle] is right next to that big slaughterhouse?
[END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE TWO]
JC: First we bought one that had closed down. It was sponsored under the Associated Grocers. I don’t know if you if you have ever heard of them?
JA: Oh, yes. You bought it or the Association did?
JC: This was separate. All the meat guys put in money. I put in $5,000. and there were maybe 30, 40, or 50 guys who put in $5,000. They would kill the beef and we would have beef [in the stores]. The only thing wrong with that was that we had to sell part of it to the [United States] Army. So they kept on taking more and we wouldn’t get our money out of the Army. [It was] like pulling teeth. Half of the time they cheated us out of a bunch of it. Then they went broke. So each of us put another $5,000 and we got one on 7th Street and the riverbed, another slaughterhouse was there. They ran that for two or three years and that went broke. By that time the war was over and we were starting to get meat from the regular packinghouses.
JA: So it was really tough to get meat?
JC: Yes, especially bacon. At Luke Field [Luke Air Force Base, Glendale, Arizona], they would send them slab bacon and hams. They couldn’t use all of them. They had to empty their walk-ins [refrigerators], otherwise they wouldn’t get their new quota. So lots of the guys were bringing in slabs of bacon and ham to the store and ask us if we would slice it for them. I remember our butcher sliced hundreds of those slabs of bacon, or sliced the hams on the power saw for them. But meat was scarce, the Army [government] got everything they needed and more, and they wasted it.
JA: So these people, who would be bringing you the bacon and ham, would be the officers?
JC: No, they were some of the guys that dug it out of the garbage. The slabs had the original paper on it and they would throw them away in the garbage. They’d tell the guys that they would be throwing away some hams and bacon so if you guys want it. Anyway, but that’s the way it was.
JA: There wasn’t any way that you, as merchants, could get that surplus?
JC: No, there wasn’t any way that you could get it.
JA: That was too bad.
JC: We would get so many pounds of bacon already sliced. My butcher was having so much trouble, that he started what he called the Bacon List. You put your name on this pad. He got 12 pounds of bacon. Each one on the list got a pound and they would cross their name off the list. If they wanted some more they could put their on the bottom of the list.
JA: Sure.
JC: That’s the way we solved the bacon problem, the best [way] we could. Every once in awhile, we would get some bacon.
JA: Get enough for everybody?
JC: Oh, you never got enough for everybody, but everybody got something, sooner or later.
JA: What were some of the other things that you couldn’t keep or get in the store?
JC: We had plenty of bread, plenty of flour. I don’t know, it mostly was the meat. Coffee got a little short sometimes.
JA: Would you characterize your business as prosperous during the wartime?
JC: Yes, it was all right. I got a liquor license for it in 1941, I think it was. That’s what was scarce, whiskey.
JA: Oh was it?
JC: I would get 25 cases of whiskey and then I would just bring out five cases. The guys from Luke Field would come in and all line up. All we could get were fifths. So you would sell one fifth to [each] of the guys.
JA: That was probably very lucrative, wasn’t it?
JC: In a way yes, and in a way no. The only [brand] you could get, mostly, was Schenley’s. They called it Black Label Schenley’s and there was one made out of potatoes because sugar was scarce. You know where the Thunderbird School is?
JA: Yes.
JC: They grew a lot of potatoes there, and they would put them in and chopped and dried them, and shipped them to make whiskey.
JA: Oh?
JC: Another thing wrong with it, they used to be able to get gin from Mexico and tequila from Mexico. You had to buy one case of gin or tequila in order to get one case of whiskey. So once the five cases of whiskey were gone, the only thing left on the shelf [would be] the gin or tequila. Those we sold at cost in order to get rid of it, because we had so much of it. So you didn’t come out as good on it, actually. After the war was over [we] started getting more whiskey.
JA: Did the people in the community drink a lot too, or was it just the soldiers [airmen]?
JC: People in the community were just like people in any other community, they drank!
JA: What were some of the social things that you did as a part of the community?
JC: They had deals right there in the middle of the park [Murphy Park].
JA: Like—
JC: Like Cinco de Mayo [and] the Sixteenth of September. They still have it, don’t they?
JA: Yes.
JC: They used to close off 58th, where the telephone company is, and the Palomino [Jewelry Store] and stuff is there. They would close that off and that was a place where the people could dance. Glendale Avenue would have to be kept open because it was designated as a military road to Luke Field at that time. That [street] and Northern Avenue, I think. They had dances in there and all kinds of food that was sold. They had little stands, they still do now, don’t they?
JA: I believe—
JC: Or haven’t they started yet? They usually have one around the 16 of September.
JA: That will be coming up in two weeks.
JC: That will be coming up soon. I don’t know if they will have it here or if they will have it over, they used to have it downtown. They used to have the Christmas Tree, it used to be there on the corner across from the gym that they closed. I don’t know if it is still there or if they killed it.
JA: The tree?
JC: Yes, I think they killed it when they built City Hall.
JA: That would be my guess, I don’t recall seeing it.
JC: It was wired up and it had the power going into it. It had plugs right in it.
JA: Huge!
JC: On Easter, sometimes in the old days, they used to have the candle parade from there going over to the churches.
JA: Oh, really?
JC: I don’t know if they have that any more, or not.
JA: I don’t know. I never heard of it.
JC: I don’t go downtown too much, anymore.
JA: No?
JC: After 40 years of going downtown, I don’t go down!
JA: Was there anything that you as business people sponsored in Glendale, an activity, or a club, or whatever?
JC: They sponsored everything that went [on]. Usually the grocery stores had to ante up a little for it. You knew that, didn’t you?
JA: No, I didn’t.
JC: They’d come in, “If you can’t give money, can you give so much of this.” So many potatoes, or some much of this, or so many cases of soda pop. You always do, they still do. The same thing is going on in El Mirage.
JA: Sort of a community service?
JC: Yes. Out there we sponsor the baseball team, I think it is, one baseball team every year. The old town is a big city now!
JA: If you [can], summarize in a couple of statements, why you enjoyed Glendale.
JC: People were friendly. You knew everybody up and down the line, merchants and customers. In fact, the other day I was paying my water bill and I saw two or three of my customers there. They stopped and wanted to talk. You know where you pay your water bill in that little room? One of them was telling me that his wife died, and she was one of my old customers. A lot of the poor people that were here, are now living in El Mirage. I see them out there—
JA: Really?
JC: —in the store.
JA: Why is that? Do you have any idea?
JC: What?
JA: Why they moved to El Mirage?
JC: It is too expensive to live up here. They can’t afford these houses. Out there they have quite a few government houses that they rent. Some one them are renting houses for as low as $45.00 a month.
JA: Wow!
JC: They pay according to their income. You can’t even get anything over here for $45.00 a month.
JA: You can’t rent a room.
JC: This woman is a widow, she has one or two kids, and she gets food stamps, and she has one of those houses that the government furnishes them. They have medical facilities out there too, that don’t cost anything. They get by better, I suppose, than Glendale [people]. I don’t where they would go? Where do the poor people go for medical facilities here?
JA: I don’t know, unless they can be part of these group plans, like HMO’s [Health Maintenance Organization].
JC: They don’t have money for that.
JA: I don’t think so. So I don’t know.
JC: Out there they have one outfit that is a family deal and certain times of the week a dentist comes in and [does] free work; and certain times of the week there this doctor comes in and that doctor comes in. They check the people.
JA: That is great.
JC: I think it is all free.
JA: That is great.
JC: They are regular doctors who charge money in other places.
JA: They charge enough somewhere else to pay for their services down there!
JC: No, maybe not. Maybe it is just their way of donating to the—
JA: Civic duty.
JC: Civic duty, to the people, to the less fortunate ones.
JA: I was going to say that I think that is a better welfare system than when the government gets itself involved and tries to do it all for us.
JC: [Laughter]
JA: Let me ask some questions here. They have a biographical sheet and some of this may be a little bit monotonous, but maybe you can help me fill this in and give me some of the dates.
When were you born and in what city and state?
JC: [I was born] in Ray, Arizona, March 25, 1917.
JA: Right in the middle of [World War I], or we hadn’t quite gotten into it yet.
JC: Yes, I think they had gotten into it by that time.
JA: Date and place of your marriage?
JC: I never got married.
JA: Never? The date you arrived in Glendale?
JC: I think it was in May of 1940.
JA: Names of the schools that you attended and the date you graduated. You went to Ray Elementary?
JA: No, Sonora Elementary.
JC: Sonora Elementary and Ray High School.
JA: What year did you graduate from high school, do you [remember]?
JC: In 1936. That was before you were born!
JA: A couple of years!
JC: What?
JA: A couple of years! [Laughter] And any college?
JC: University [of Arizona], [in] Tucson. [I] graduated in 1940, I think it was May of 1940.
JA: You came straight from the U of A to start your shop!
JC: Two weeks! Two weeks after I graduated I was in the grocery business. [Laughter] Sounds silly!
JA: Wish I had done it!
JC: I was going to go to work for the Valley [National] Bank. I had a chance to go to the Valley [National] Bank in Phoenix or the Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson. But they both paid $75. a month.
JA: Did you do better than that [in the] grocery [business]?
JC: Yes.
JA: Good. I would have expected that. Any organizations, whether fraternal, civic, or social that you were a part of? Religious affiliation?
JC: Catholic.
JA: Military service?
JC: No, I was called to the thing [the draft board] and I went down for the physical. When I was 13 I [was] shot with a shotgun and the right eye doesn’t work. I can’t see out of it. I have 400 vision.
JA: Wow!
JC: I wanted to go in and I just about talked the guy in there in to [letting me go in], because they needed [men]. Then who [should be] down there but my eye doctor from Phoenix. “What are you doing here?” He told them, “What have you got [here]? This man can’t even see out of his right eye.” So he said you do something else for the good of the country instead of [fighting]. He said with men like you, your buddy will get killed. [Laughter] That’s what he told me!
JA: I’ll be.
JC: What?
JA: I’ll be. So they just let you go back to your business, or did you have to do some other service?
JC: No that was it.
JA: This is a question that I forgot to ask you. During the war times there were a lot of bond drives, scrap drives, and other kinds of drives. Did your grocery [store] get involved in any of that?
JC: We got involved in all of those when they had them, all the grocery [stores] got involved in them.
JA: So that was just standard?
JC: It was a standard deal.
JA: Do you have any scrapbooks or photo albums that might show something or tell us something about Glendale?
JC: No.
JA: Pictures of buildings?
JC: I looked for them, but I don’t know who borrowed it, and I couldn’t find it. I had two brothers who were in the [United States] Army.
JA: Where did they serve?
JC: My brother Jimmy, who was a partner with me in the grocery store, he went into Europe as far as Germany, I think. He came back all right. I had a brother older than I am, by the name of Pete, he was on the B-29’s that were bombing Japan. He got killed. By the way, he was in the first group that went out.
JA: With [General James H.] Doolittle?
JC: No, no, those weren’t B-29’s.
JA: Those were B-24’s, that’s right.
JC: Yes.
JA: Okay.
JC: I’ll show you a book. The Army gave me a book on things.
JA: Oh, really?
JC: Yes. They lost three planes, I think. The first two they got rescued in the ocean and the [crew] on the third one got killed. So he never made it back. It was one or two weeks before the war ended. The last run was the run to Osaka, Japan. First they started off from India and they would fly over to China and that way. Later on they moved to a little island that they called Tinian. He was an engineer on a B-29.
JA: He didn’t fly one of the A-bomb [atomic] [planes]?
JC: No, he got killed two weeks before they dropped the first A-bomb.
JA: Sorry to hear that.
JC: Yes.
JA: What were your other brother and sisters names who lived in the Glendale area at anytime? Did all of you come and live here?
JC: One was Thomas Coury. He had a furniture store, where the gym was, for 40 some years.
JA: Do you know what his birth date is?
JC: No, I think it was [in] 1910, I’m not too sure. Then I have a sister that lives on Orangewood [Avenue].
JA: Her name is?
JC: Mary [Coury] Schneider.
JA: S-N-Y-E-D-E-R?
JC: No, S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R.
JA: Okay, and her birth date?
JC: I think it was 1904. She is 87.
JA: Do you know the month and the day, by any chance?
JC: I think it was January 1, or January 2, 1904. [It was ] January 2, 1904.
JA: Did Jimmy or Pete ever live in Glendale?
JC: Yes, Jim lived on Orangewood [Avenue]. His wife still lives in the same house. His wife’s name is Margaret.
JA: Do you know Jimmy’s birth date?
JC: I think he was born in 1921. I don’t remember what month it was.
JA: How about Pete? He is older than you are.
JC: Yes, Pete was born in 1915.
JA: Were you all born down in Ray, or the Sonora area?
JC: Yes, most of them, all except my sister Mary. She was born in Lebanon. My brother Tom was born in Bisbee [Cochise County, Arizona]. No, not Bisbee, what’s the name of it?
JA: Morenci?
JC: Morenci. The rest of them were born in Ray.
JA: What is your father’s name?
JC: Elias. E-L-I-A-S.
JA: Middle name?
JC: Thomas.
JA: His birth date, any idea?
JC: [In] 1882, I think. I think he was born in March, sometime, I don’t know.
JA: His occupation was dry goods store?
JC: Grocer, he was a grocer.
JA: He was a grocer. That’s right.
JC: And I was a grocer!
JA: And your uncle was—
JC: And my nephews are grocers! [Laughter]
JA: For some reason I latched on to your uncle dry goods store.
JC: My uncle was a dry goods man.
JA: Your mom’s full name?
JC: Gaeta. G-A-E-T-A.
JA: Okay, and her maiden name?
JC: Daou.
JA: Her birth date?
JC: I think it was 1884. I don’t know what month or [day].
JA: Did she ever have an occupation? Did she work occasionally?
JC: At times, the wives helped their husbands in the stores! [Laughter] And raised the kids!
JA: Is there anything extra that you could tell me about your uncle, and his family, and their store here in Glendale?
JC: No, they had that dry goods store. Later on they moved down across from the Valley [National] Bank. I think it is a flower shop now. [The Daou’s store was called the Boston Store.]
JA: Okay. He just maintained the same store, just different location?
JC: Yes, they changed from a complete dry goods store to a women’s clothing store, at the time they moved over there.
JA: Okay. This has been very interesting. I do appreciate your [time].
JC: I hope it helps some!
JA: Oh, it is [very helpful]. Businesses change so much.
JC: I’ll tell you who can tell you a lot of stuff, Volene Stockham.
JA: I have talked with Volene.
JC: You talked to her?
JA: We had a very good time with her. We talked some about their butcher store. Her brother-in-law [Paul Stockham], I guess, was one of the early people who designed coolers.
JC: Oh yes, they made those straw [evaporative] coolers. He was one of the first ones to make them and he used to sell them.
JA: Yes. There is one house that still has one left on it. I went over to look at it, just to see what it looked like.
JC: It was just round, didn’t have the corners.
JA: Just a round mat all the way around. Really quite interesting.
JC: Yes.
JA: Neat lady, we had a good time with her.
JC: What?
JA: She’s a very neat lady.
JC: She’s a nice lady.
JA: She really is.
JC: Yes, they [were] good people. [Buster] Foster was a pretty nice fellow, but the Stockham’s were more friendly.
JA: Is Foster still alive?
JC: Who?
JA: Mr. Foster?
JC: Yes, he lives in Sun City, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: Does he? Do you know what—
JC: He still owns that—
JA: Still owns the building?
JC: Yes. That building where the finance place is closed.
JA: What is his first name? Do you know?
JC: He used to go by initials. It was G, or J. R., or R. J., I don’t know.
JA: They used to call him “Buzz”, didn’t they? “Buzz” Foster, was that his nickname? [A. B. “Buster” Foster]
JC: He was older than I am, so I always called him Mr. Foster.
JA: As it should be!
[END OF TAPE TWO – SIDE ONE]

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN COURY
Today is August 29, 1991, I am Jerry Abbitt and I will be interviewing John Coury.
JA: Why don’t you start by taking me through how your family ended up here in the Arizona area and eventually to Glendale, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. What was part of the transition to bring you here from where you were originally?
JC: It was the Turkish war that started back in the middle of the 1800s. If you studied your history you have heard about the Moors, which were the Turks, that came in through North Africa up to Spain. The other group went across Greece up to about the middle of Europe. They were Muslims. There were Catholics in Lebanon. Lebanon was not Lebanon then, it was Syria. Lebanon wasn’t declared Lebanon until 1930 when they created it. It was a part of Syria.
They started killing the Christians. My folks were Christians. There were Armenians, and they were Christians, too. They started killing them off. My dad and mom [Elias Thomas and Gaeta (Daou) Coury] were just newly married and they killed some of their relatives, so dad took off first. Well, dad’s brother [in-law, Mansour Daou] came over first. He went over to Canada. After he was settled in Canada, he brought my grandmother [over], my dad’s mother, and they stayed in Canada. My dad went to Canada, too, but he didn’t like the winters out there. As I was telling you, my mother’s brother had come [to the United States] and he ended up in Morenci, [Graham County, Arizona] which at that time was a mining town. Still is, I suppose.
JA: Yes.
JC: He told them how nice the weather was down here. He started off in the fall of 1906, I believe, and there weren’t any airplanes at that time [laughter] and the trains were far and few. There were not many. So part of [the trip] he came across the place they call Port Huron, [Michigan]. That is between Canada and the United States. Then he came down part on stagecoach, to the where they had trains. He ended up in Chicago, [Illinois] and from there, from there were trains. But like dad said the trains would only go 50 or 100 miles at the most, then they wouldn’t run again for another three or four weeks. The same train would go back [to the original point], or you couldn’t get passage on it. So it took him until next spring to get down here. He ended up in Holbrook, [Navajo County, Arizona]. From Holbrook he came down by stagecoach. He came down as far as Tempe, [Maricopa County, Arizona] and from Tempe, the copper mine had started the railroad line that was coming up towards Phoenix, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: Yes.
JC: From there he took that one over there. Anyway, when he got there, most of the people out there were merchants.
JA: From out there meaning in Morenci?
JC: From Lebanon.
JA: Okay.
JC: Most of them are merchants. For example, you have heard of Fred Koory, who was running for Governor [of Arizona] and didn’t make it? Well, his [grand] dad [George Koory] is a Lebanese. He is a Coury too, but the spelling of the name, by the way, depends upon the man who brings you in.
JA: Really?
JC: The immigration man. Because the names are spelled in Arabic and the immigration man doesn’t know how to write in Arabic. So what does he do? He spells it the best way that he can or [as] he thinks it should be. That other man, Fred Koory, they put K-O-O-R-Y. I think in my dad’s case, it was an Irishman. They spell Coury with a C over in Ireland. So he put C-O-U-R-Y. That’s the way he made it. [My dad] figured that it didn’t make any difference, they were making a new start in a new country anyway. So the name didn’t make any difference.
Now you wanted to know which of the guys came in from Lebanon. There was my uncle, Daou who later moved over here to Glendale.
JA: What’s his first name?
JC: His first name was Masour, M-A-N-S-O-U-R, I can’t spell it just exactly. His last name was Daou.
JA: Okay.
JC: Daou, by the way in Arabic, means light.
JA: Light?
JC: Yes.
JA: So he brought the light to Glendale.
JC: He came in and had a dry-goods store, right down town. You know where they sell pictures now, what do they call it? They had an article about them having a showing. It is the same building that he was in. Right south—
JA: South of the park?
JC: By the park, yes, and what do they call it?
JA: As I was driving by today I was trying to memorize the names of everything, but I didn’t get them.
JC: That one I think they have color pictures of colored artists. My dad ended up in a place they call Ray, Arizona. He started a little grocery store there. In 1912 the whole town burned down.
JA: The town of Ray?
JC: Yes.
JA: Okay.
JC: The wooden sidewalks and everything burned down, and so did his store. He moved across the river, it was a creek and they called it Mineral Creek. He bought an adobe building there and put in a grocery store. At that time there was an outfit by the name of Steinfield’s. Have you ever heard of Steinfield’s in Tucson, [Pima County, Arizona]?
JA: No, what were they?
JC: They had a branch over here in Ray and later on they moved to Tucson and they became like Goldwater’s in Tucson, like the Goldwater’s here in Phoenix.
JA: So they got started in Ray?
JC: I think they got started in Ray. Dad used to buy stuff from them. They had a wholesale house. The little town of Sonora was on the Mexican side of the mining town. They were talking about people who were coming in from Lebanon. There was Saba’s, a western store. I see they have a new branch over here on 75th [Avenue] and on the south side there is a Safeway store and right next to it, let’s see north of Olive would be Peoria—
JA: Peoria?
JC: It is on Peoria and I think 75th there’s a big shopping center on the four corners.
JA: I think so, it has been a long time since I have been up that far.
JC: Then on the southwest corner, I came in through there because they have Olive all blocked where they are putting in new pipes, anyway, they have a Saba’s there. Anyway, they were down there [in Ray]. There was a [inaudible], they are from Mesa, [Maricopa County, Arizona] now. There were the Bashas, Basha’s grocery store, they were down there. There were some Karams.
JA: Karams?
JC: Karams, yes.
JA: Is that a store?
JC: Yes. Basha’s sold their dry goods store to Karams in 1929. They moved next to Chandler, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. What was the name of it?
JA: Gilbert?
JC: It was around there some place. They started a grocery store. Before that they were in dry goods only . There were the Gannons. They have Jordan’s Restaurants in Phoenix. They are Lebanonese, too.
JA: Okay.
JC: Who else was there? There was some Elias but I don’t know if they have any businesses in Phoenix now.
JA: What did they run, what was their business?
JC: They had dry goods stores out there.
JA: All of these were in Ray?
JC: In Sonora. After Ray burned down, they all moved over to Sonora. The company started building it up. Ray wasn’t that large, Sonora was larger. Some of them moved to Superior, [Pinal County, Arizona]. The ones that ended up here in Glendale were the Koorys, K-O-O-R-Y, he had a market. You know where Sergeant’s Market is?
JA: No.
JC: He built Sergeant’s Market, but he had another market before that, about a block down on the eastside, [Fifth Avenue Grocery] which is now an empty lot. There was a Chinaman, by the name of Sing [George Wong Sing]—
JA: George Sing.
JC: He had the market across the street. Let’s see who else was there? There was my uncle, Daou. I didn’t come in until 1940. I graduated from [the University of Arizona] Tucson. I laugh about that! Dad used to make fun of me. He said, “You went four years to college and got a degree in banking and you are going to get paid $75. a month. Is that all? You could sell peanuts on the corner and make more money than that!”
We were walking down Glendale Avenue from 58th over this way, and where that little karate place was, there was a little grocery store. The man [James Scully] had died and the widow was trying to run it and she was having a rough time. It was for sale. Before two days were over, I ended up buying that store. Dad bought it for me. That’s how I got started in the grocery business.
JA: Really?
JC: I was there for 21 years in that one spot. Then we bought this old building that used to be known as the Ryder Building. I think it is the one that they tore down that used to be the grocery store. We remodeled it and moved in there. Now Safeway was there before us.
JA: What street are you on, what crossroads?
JC: You know where the City Hall is?
JA: Yes.
JC: That 58th Drive [First Avenue] used to go through.
JA: Okay, so it was the building that they tore down in order to build the City Hall.
JC: The City Hall is there now.
JA: Okay.
JC: Do you know Mrs. Stockham?
JA: Yes, Volene?
JC: Volene Stockham, she and her husband, [Carl], had the meat market [Stockham’s Meat Market was located in the back of Foster’s Grocery Store], you remember that place that I told you they were selling pictures—
JA: Yes.
JC: Then there is a print shop, where the print shop is used to be a pool hall and a barber shop in the front window.
JA: Okay.
JC: Then right next door used to be a finance place. It has been empty for awhile now. Mrs. Stockham and her husband had a meat market in half of that [building] and there was a guy by the name of [Buster] Foster.
JA: Yes, Foster’s Grocery.
JC: Right next to it. Mrs. Stockham and her husband had one side of it and Foster had the other side. Right next to it was a bigger building, I think it was 50 feet, was JC Penneys. There was a fellow by the name of [Al] Jorgenson, a veteran, who was in partners with Mr. J. C. Penney. [Those] were some of the original stores. The guy and J. C. Penney were 50-50 partners. Then right next door to that one is the karate place. That’s where I was with [my] grocery store.
JA: Okay.
JC: Then right next to that one was a fellow by the name of Biaett [D. H.] and his wife. [The Federated Store]
JA: Biaett?
JC: Yes, Biaett. His son [Kenneth] was a lawyer [who] practiced law here in Glendale for 25 or 30 years. I think he just retired. He had a Federated Store. They used to call them Federated Stores. Right next door to that one, where there is a little restaurant, what do they call that little Mexican restaurant?
JA: [I don’t know.]
JC: You don’t live in Glendale then?
JA: No, I live just on the outside of it. I’m trying to walk through town though.
JC: That’s what I am doing, I’m walking you through that one block. There is a Mexican restaurant there. It is one of the retired policemen and his wife that have a restaurant there. Okay, there was a fellow by the name of Summers [Gene]. But before Summers there was this guy who was Justice of Peace of Glendale [who] had a dry goods store there, a men’s store, just for men’s clothing. I forget his name. [Frank Carden] Later on he sold it to this fellow by the name of Summers and he had a men’s store for quite awhile. Later on he died and [it] was closed up. Then a pawnshop [was there] for quite awhile. Right in the corner where the gym was that they just closed up—
JA: Okay.
JC: Originally there was a Newman’s Department Store. Before that there was a bank [Glendale State Bank] that went broke in the depression of 1921. Then a fellow by the name of Newman put a department store in. Later on he sold out [to Carroll Wood for Wood’s Drug Store] and Ryan Evans [purchased Wood’s from its current owner, D. H. “Red” Wilson] put a drugstore there. Ryan Evans had it for quite awhile. There was a fellow by the name of “Red” Wilson that used to run that and he bought [sold] the store [to] Ryan Evans. He [ran it] as a drugstore for quite awhile.
JA: It seems to me like there was an awful lot of dry goods stores and grocery stores in that little area, given what you described it.
JC: That was the whole town, the whole town!
JA: A lot of competition.
JC: Going back east, on the eastside on the next block, the houses started where the Valley [National] Bank— [Chase]
JA: Yes.
JC: There was a two-story house there. There was where the doctor lived. [Dr. Robert Franklin] Where the Telephone Company is was another two-story house and there was another doctor there. [Dr. J. M. Pearson] But that was the whole town! Well, it was a small town.
JA: Now what time period are we talking about? Is this in 1940 when you came?
JC: I came in 1940, but I went back further than 1940 on some of [what I told you] to give you a history of each building as you come up. Across the street there was an Ever Ready Drug Store [Glendale Pharmacy is what he is referring to. Ever Ready was on a different corner]. That was [on the] south side of The First National Bank building. Is that what it is now? Where the lawyer [Richard Coffinger] is, the only building [sitting down] in the triangle? That was a dry goods store, no, it was a drug store then. Right next to it was a service station on the corner and there was a Western Auto Store there.
Later on the Western Auto Store moved across the street to where one of those antique shops is and it became a liquor store, the liquor department for the drug store. [“Doc” Jones’ Glendale Pharmacy]
JA: Really?
JC: That Western Auto Store and service station was owned by a guy by the name of Whitney, Joe Whitney and his brother [partner, Vic Brooks]. I don’t know if you ever heard of them?
JA: Yes. Would that have been a Firestone or a Western Auto?
JC: Maybe it was a Firestone Store, [on the corner of S. First and Grand. It was owned by Marion “Mutt” Whitney.] I don’t know which. [Vic Brooks and Joe Whitney owned the Western Auto on the westside of the street and the Brooks and Whitney Auto Parts Store on the eastside.]
JA: I believe they owned the Firestone, if you are referring to the same Whitneys that I—
JC: Maybe that’s it, then. Maybe it is the Firestone Store. Now, on this side of the street, right on the corner was a five and dime store. I forget what her name was. [Evans] Later on she started Youngtown, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: No kidding?
JC: She had a dry goods store and she built a big house in Youngtown and a lot of her friends wanted to come in and live around and she had a house with a lot of grass and I think a swimming pool. So she sort of started it.
JA: Oh?
JC: On this side of the street there was Ladda’s Café, a Greek fellow had it. Right next to it was a barbershop and an optometrist. The optometrist was [Dr. John] Fahrendorf. Maybe you have heard of Fahrendorf?
JA: He was my eye doctor when I was growing up.
JC: He first started right there across the street. In fact, if you ever see him, ask him about the time, that bank was a Valley [National] Bank, and some guy robbed the bank one time. Fahrendorf and a bunch [of guys] were involved in trying to catch him, I don’t know [for sure].
JA: Really!
JC: Yes, they caught the guy. He was just a poor guy who was half drunk and didn’t have any money and he had his rifle with him.
So across the alley from there was Sine Hardware, in that big two story building. That has been there since 1890 [1911] something.
JA: Big establishment. Would you have competed with them, given the dry goods nature of your business?
JC: No, mine was groceries. I had a grocery store.
JA: Okay, it was your uncle that was running the dry goods store when you first came. Would that have been in direct competition to Sine Hardware?
JC: No, Sine Hardware was hardware.
JA: Just hardware.
JC: The other one was clothing.
JA: Okay.
JC: They had shoes, hats, underwear, coats, suits, just soft goods, clothing. It isn’t like nowadays where they sell hardware and everything [else].
JA: I guess not, okay.
JC: Across the street, right behind where the City Hall is today, in the back part where the parking garage is, there was a Mexican Bakery there, a Mexican pool hall, and there was a second-hand hardware store there. On 58th, where it is closed, there was, what’s his name, he had a bicycle shop right across from the parking lot. Right next to it was a glass place. The glass place is now on 59th Avenue, about a block or so down on the west side. They moved from there to there.
JA: Okay.
JC: First it was an auto license place and then later on it became a TV place. [Ralph] Master’s TV [first it was Weigold’s Market and after World War II the license place and finally Master’s Radio and TV] had a place there. When they had to move over, they moved over north of the Valley [National] Bank. Now, I understand that they have moved way up north some place.
The City Hall was there and had two buildings. Right on the corner there was a hardware store. I forget the name of the hardware store [and farm implement company, O. S. Stapley’s.] There was a big hardware store there, right across from the [First United] Methodist Church.
Let’s see, on the other side of the park [Murphy Park] where [now is] First Security Pacific, [Bank of America] there was a law office there on the corner. Biaett and Bahde, he became mayor afterwards. [neither became Mayor.] They had law offices there. [Dr. Roger] Trueblood had a home and an office right there. [Trueblood’s office was in the former home and office of Dr. Denninger.] The print shop [Valley Printers which had published The Glendale Herald was next to Trueblood’s.] that is over on, right next to the, north [south] of the Sage There is a dentist there now and a print shop. [He is referring to Pueblo Publishing and the dentist’s office was the new offices of Dr. Roger, Dr. Roger K. and Dr. Craig Trueblood. Thee Trueblood’s moved from the Glenn Drive location to these offices on 59th Ave..]
JA: Okay.
JC: He was next to Trueblood’s place. Right on the northeast corner of the park, right across the street, was Roonie Slack’s Service Station.
JA: Yes, Roonie Slack.
JC: Roonie Slack, I don’t know if you remember him or not.
JA: Yes, I have interviewed with him.
JC: Let’s see, what else. That’s about the most of it. On the east side there was a movie picture house, [The El Rey] Betts Insurance [Betts and Traubel moved into the theater building when the theater closed.] and, I don’t know if you remember Betts Insurance or not.
JA: Yes.
JC: Right on the south [north] side of the corner was the ice cream place. I forget what the name of it was. [Upton’s] Maybe you can ask somebody.
JA: Okay. As I have listened to you describe—
JC: I am describing around the park [Murphy Park].
[END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE ONE]
JC: We went around the park area. On the south side of the park there was a, right on the corner where Miller Shoe Store is, there was a Valenzuela Department Store, a dry goods store [Leonard Valenzuela’s El Paso Store]. Right next to it was Henri Sanchez’ Jewelry Store. On the east side of the park was The Glendale News. A fellow by the name of “Bill” [William] Ryan used to run it.
JA: “Bill” Ryan?
JC: Yes, he passed away, he was up in his years. He ran the newspaper and everything.
JA: What was the atmosphere like with all of you business people, what kind of interaction did you have as the business community of Glendale in those early years?
JC: It was friendly and a lot of people, most of them, came downtown. For example, we didn’t open up [on] Sundays. Grocery stores didn’t open up on Sundays.
JA: Okay.
JC: So we opened up on Saturdays until 12:00, because a lot of people used to come in and buy their groceries. Then you’d put them in boxes, and then you’d put their name on it, and they usually went to the moving picture. When the picture show was out they would come over and their groceries were ready to go. Of course, in those days, [we] didn’t have all the frozen stuff, [or] ice cream, [and things] like that. It was mostly staples and stuff.
JA: That’s right. So your Saturday night was a work night, it wasn’t the enjoyment of the social atmosphere of Glendale?
JC: The whole thing was social. The people coming in to trade with you. They didn’t rush in and rush out. They came in and they visited with you. You visited up and down the aisle with, “How’s everything?” and all this other stuff. Some of them, the ones you knew better, they wanted to talk more. A lot of them were farmers, some of them worked on farms. It was just a friendly town! By the way, when I came [here] in 1940 Glendale had about 5,000 people.
JA: Okay.
JC: [Then] the north edge of the town was Orangewood [Avenue]. The rest was farm country.
JA: Hard to believe, isn’t it?
JC: Yes. Going east, 51st was about the end of it, [that] was where the Sugar Beet Factory is now. That was a cotton compress. They had a place there where they baled the cotton. Where Cerreta [Candy Company] and those thrift shops are, and the mechanic shop, that was the place where they baled the cotton. Then after the war [World War II] started they closed that down and they put trailers there for the soldiers [airmen] to live in.
JA: Really? So that’s where they were located.
JC: They had a bunch of trailers in there.
JA: When you came in 1940, Glendale’s coming out of The Depression era, and getting ready naively, not knowing it yet, getting ready to move into the war era. What did you find in terms of the business here? Was it booming, was it slow, was it active?
JC: That store I took over was dead! It took me a year or so to build it up. The man [James Scully] had died in 1938 and Mrs., I forget her name, the widow [Eva Scully, a Home Economics teacher at Glendale Union High School], anyway there wasn’t enough merchandise on the shelves to do any good, actually. [I had] to restock it, clean it up a little, paint it some. We had a meat market that had a good butcher in there. By the way, that same butcher, a fellow by the name of Wilbur Thompson, if you know any old timers in town, they know him because he cut meat for all of us. He stayed with me for 38 years until he retired. [Laughter]
JA: Wow!
JC: Technically, he ran the meat market and I ran the grocery part.
JA: He’s the kind of partner you want.
JC: When we moved across in 1961, where the City Hall is, it was a bigger store and then we went to self service, before it was all over the counter. There have been a lot of improvements in the grocery business from those years. When I first went in there, the produce department consisted of lettuce crates with butcher paper on top. We didn’t have any refrigeration for the produce. You went to the market every morning and you brought in the produce for the day. Then in the evening, what was left over you had to move all of it out into the walk-in to keep it cold. The next morning you weeded out what was good and put in the new stuff. Later on I bought, I think it was about four or five years later on, we brought in our first produce case. I think our first produce case was about from there over to about here [gesturing]. It had doors on the bottom and it had big sliding [doors] and it really kept the vegetables right. Better than what they have now a days.
JA: Oh?
JC: Because it had big huge sliding doors. You could put lettuce in there and two weeks later it would still be crisp!
JA: Wow!
JC: You see now a days, they are open and the stuff just dries out. Half the time they don’t spray often enough, so that is why the vegetables get dehydrated.
JA: Yes. Did you buy most of your produce locally?
JC: I used to go down to the market in Phoenix. You know where they are putting the stadium [America West Arena] for the [Phoenix] Suns? In down town Phoenix?
JA: Give me a crossroad.
JC: I think it is Washington, well, it is Madison actually, and about Third Street. [Do] you know where that is?
JA: Yes, right by the Greyhound [Depot].
JC: Right south of it, to the right, is the new Suns stadium [Arena].
JA: Okay.
JC: It is already half way up.
JA: I haven’t been out there.
JC: You haven’t been out there in a long time? I was down there the other day. [Laughter] Right to the east of that was a produce market. The farmers would bring in their stuff and there was some produce houses. There was one they called the Banana House, they sold bananas mostly. Another one was the Potato House, and they only sold [potatoes]. So you bought what you needed and you brought it in [to your store]. It was about 20 years later that they started delivering the produce to the stores. You just ordered it [by] the telephone.
JA: Prior to your time some of the grocery [stores], like Ong’s Market and Sing’s would take groceries to people’s homes.
JC: Oh, we delivered.
JA: Did you deliver as well in the 1940s?
JC: We delivered up until about 1970 or 1975.
JA: Really?
JC: In fact, we delivered to the older people, as long as we were in business, until 1982. You didn’t make any money on it, because wages had gone up too high.
JA: You went out of business in 1982, is that right?
JC: I had to sell the property and the business. The business, I just closed it down. We sold all the property to the city [of Glendale]. They were going to condemn it and close it down. So we decided that we might as well sell it and get out of it. My brother [Thomas] owned the grocery store, the parking lot, the building for the bicycle place, the TV shop had the third building there on 58th , and then right behind us we had the building for the Mexican Pool Hall, and the building for the Mexican Bakery. We were thinking that one of these days we were going to enlarge the grocery store and tear that down. But it didn’t work out that way. The City wanted it.
JA: So that ended your grocery store business career?
JC: We have one—
JA: Do you?
JC: We have one in El Mirage, [Maricopa County, Arizona]. Have you ever been to El Mirage?
JA: Yes, a couple of times.
JC: Have you ever seen the shopping center?
JA: Yes, but I don’t remember it real vividly?
JC: We own the whole shopping center. My nephews and I, and it says Coury’s Market.
JA: Yes.
JC: On 19th Avenue and Osborne [Road] we have another one. It used to be a Bayless [Store].
JA: Yes, the old Bayless [Store].
JC: Right south of the Catholic Church.
JA: So you are still in it, then.
JC: Well, not me, the nephews are doing it.
JA: A couple of things, before we move on to other areas, first of all you mentioned this Mexican Pool Hall.
JC: Yes.
JA: That’s interesting to me in that, was it exclusively for Mexicans, or—
JC: No, it was a Mexican man who ran it.
JA: Okay.
JC: Anybody could go in there.
JA: Okay.
JC: But it was called the Mexican Pool Hall.
JA: It didn’t mean that it was a segregated pool hall?
JC: No, no, they didn’t have that segregated stuff [then]. Most of the Mexicans lived down behind the ice plant at that time, and a lot of them lived behind Sing’s Market. You know where Sing’s Market was? They lived in that area.
JA: Were you pretty good friends with the Sing’s and the Ong’s, and others that ran grocery [stores]? Did you all sort of discuss business?
JC: I knew them, but Ong, I think, liked to do a lot of betting and I never cared for that. The ones that we were friendly with were Volene Stockham and her husband [Carl]. By the way, is her husband still alive or has he passed away?
JA: The last time I talked to her was about three weeks ago, and he was still alive but he is not doing well.
JC: Stable then?
JA: Yes, [but] he doesn’t even hardly know her today.
JC: He was a nice fellow. [“Buster”] Foster [of Foster’s Grocery] was a nice fellow. The guy [Al] Jorgenson, that used to run J. C. Penney’s, we used to go hunting together. He liked to hunt.
JA: Did he sell out to Penney?
JC: He retired. Those were straight partnerships that they had, they started right after World War I. [Originally Penny’s had a different location east of the park. When The Toggery closed Penny’s moved into the location to which John is referring.]
Mr. J. C. Penney would come in once a year, and they would visit, and find out how they had done. If they made profit he would take his half and the other man would take the other half. He was quite a character, that J. C. Penny! He always liked the nickel cokes [Coca-Cola]. We used to have a nickel coke machine! [Laughter]
JA: He’d come in and get a nickel coke from you?
JC: He would come in and visit, too. He would ask how business was in the grocery store. That way he could judge how business was next door in his dry goods place. Later on, they formed a company that took over the stores and they didn’t have any more of those partnerships. They were just managers and the company owned [the stores].
JA: That’s when he really took off and started booming.
JC: Yes. When Jorgenson retired [the store was] moved north of the Valley [National] Bank. There was a place where the TV place used to be there. The big, long red building used to be there. I think J. C. Penney has most of that [building]. Later on I think they had part of the [building] where The Salvation Army was. [Across the alley from the clothing store was their linens and bedding. That is St. Vincent de Paul.]In the back they had more of their bigger stuff. From there they moved to the Valley West Mall.
JA: Okay. This is just a study for me in the culture of the Lebanese folks. It is interesting to me that so many of you came to Ray and to the mining towns.
JC: They went to the mining towns because [that was] where the main businesses were. Phoenix didn’t amount to anything. Phoenix was just a little farm town. The same thing [was true] of Glendale in the 1920s, it didn’t have much. Even in 1940, when I came in, [they had] less than 5,000 [residents]. By the way, El Mirage has 5,000 [residents] now.
JA: It does? It is like starting over again!
JC: Yes. It didn’t have very much.
JA: So you really selected those—
JC: That’s where the business was.
JA: Okay. How come so many of the Lebanese were merchants and storeowners.
JC: You didn’t take up ancient history, did you?
JA: No, I didn’t.
JC: Who were the merchants from the beginning of time?
JA: I suppose—
JC: The people of Lebanon that was the center of trade.
JA: Okay.
JC: That’s all they did, they brought in stuff and they sold it out. Most of the men were merchants. It was where Beirut, [Lebanon] is now, that all was the crossroads. They brought in the stuff from the Middle East and they shipped it to the West. They are the ones who brought it, warehoused it, and resold it.
JA: It has a long history then.
JC: They have a knack for it or something, I don’t know.
JA: Apparently, you all seemed to have done well in it. How did the people of Glendale respond to you coming in? Of course, your uncle had been here before, but was there open arm reception to Lebanese?
JC: They didn’t even know what [we] were. Nobody paid attention to what you were. You were just a merchant down the street.
JA: Okay.
JC: At that same time, back in 1904 and 1905, they were also killing off the Orthodox Russians. They were called the Greek Orthodox. Do you know about churches? They are Christians, too. All these Russians came over [to] the westside of town, because of the persecution from the Turks. In fact, that’s how the United States got a lot of the people. They were abused in some other place and they came over here.
JA: Interesting perspective. Did you socialize at all with the Russian Community?
JC: I knew most of them, yes. There is Pete Tolmachoff lives over here, across from [Dr. Phillip and Bess] Rice’s. He had a brother, he has moved to California now, and I knew him. There was an Annie Uraine and her husband. One of my milkmen, worked for Webster’s Dairy [Creamery] that used to be here. He was a Popoff, his last name was Popoff.
There are a whole lot of Tolmachoff’s. There is one white bearded one called Mike. He used to come into the store and he would bring me fresh butter that he had made from his cows. He would say, “Johnny, I’ve got six pounds of butter. How much are you going to give me for them this time?” [Laughter] We’d negotiate and then we’d put them out and people liked it because it was pure butter. Yes, there were a lot of them.
Mary Tolmachoff married a German fellow. Let’s see if you can guess who it was.
JA: John F. Long?
JC: Yes, John F. Long. [Laughter] Mary Tolmachoff was Pete Tolmachoff’s sister, if you want to follow the lineage. Yes, that’s his sister. The Russians were never afraid of work.
JA: Do you have a lot of bartering like that? Where someone would bring in butter and someone else figs, or whatever, did you do a lot of bartering in the grocery business?
JC: Not bartering, but you bought, like for about 20 years they used to have a chicken farm here. You know where Bonsall Park is?
JA: Yes.
JC: There was a chicken farm that was a U. S. Experimental Station. It was run by a fellow by the name of Burt Heywang. They ran different experiments on [the farm]. Nothing wrong with the eggs, good fresh eggs. I used to buy all the eggs from him and we sold them out. I bet we used to sell, some times, as many as 50 crates of eggs a week. They came from all over [the valley] for eggs.
That chicken farm used to be an ostrich farm at one time.
JA: No kidding? [Inaudible]
JC: Later on they bought it. A fellow by the name of Bonsall, [David Harrison “Harry”, Sr.] he had—
JA: Southwest Flour and Feed?
JC: Yes. He and a bunch of other guys bought that farm and later on they [either] sold it or gave it to the Federal Government, so they could put the experimental farm there. The experiments were done between the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the chicken farm. At one time they used to feed the chickens cottonseed oil mixed with a little feed to see what effect it would have on them. It would lighten up the yolk, [the eggs] would have a real light yolk.
JA: No kidding?
JC: Yes. He was trying to find out why you couldn’t feed cottonseed meal to chickens. When he fed the cottonseed meal to the chickens the eggs would be rotten. They experimented and experimented. He used to come over, or I would go over to his place, and we would sit down and visit. He told me that they found out that cottonseed had some stuff that they called gossypol. They didn’t know what to do with it, but they took it out of the cottonseed, and then you could feed [it]. Later on they found out that they could use it for people so they wouldn’t have children.
[Gossypol is derived from cottonseed oil that lowers sperm production.]
JA: Oh, no kidding?
JC: They never used it here in the United States, but China used it for years, before we used it here. Some way or another, he told me, “We tell them about it, but nobody uses it.” The gossypol out of the cottonseed—
JA: For birth control.
JC: Sort of like a birth control, yes.
JA: I’ll be! They figured that out down here?
JC: Between here and the scientist down in Tucson.
JA: Did you purchase produce from the Japanese truck farmers in Glendale, or would they go down to Phoenix to sell and you would go down to Phoenix to buy, and you wouldn’t do purchasing—
JC: Some of them had some, but they didn’t have that much.
JA: What do you mean they didn’t have much?
JC: They would have tomatoes sometimes, and sometimes they wouldn’t have tomatoes. You couldn’t run all over. Sometimes they brought you tomatoes when they wanted to sell [them] so you bought some. In fact we still do. Most of the time when they had it, they would take it down to the market [and] you would see them there anyway. It wouldn’t be worth their while to bring just five crates of tomatoes for a small store.
JA: Yes.
JC: But now a days, for example, we have been selling cantaloupe, two kinds of watermelons, seedless and the regular ones. We get them from Harquahala and Aguila. Do you know where that is, on the other side of Wickenburg, [Maricopa County, Arizona]?
JA: Yes, we used to hunt out there. It is a long drive!
JC: Yes. They haul the cantaloupes in big cardboard [boxes]. We bought grapes [from] a local guy who had grapes. Those were the best grapes because they let them ripen up until they turn yellowish. Those Thompson Seedless [grapes], they were as sweet as sugar then! You can’t ship them because they will go to pieces.
JA: Yes.
JC: But you take them out and put them, they are really good then! We were selling, for about three weeks, close to maybe 100 crates a day, in the two stores.
JA: Wow!
JC: Those big cardboard [boxes] the [store] that was selling the most was the one in Phoenix. He was selling two of big tubs of, I don’t know if you have ever seen them. They take them out and put them right down on the floor and people can pick out from there what they want. Those sell out [and] that is local stuff. But some of the other stuff you can’t.
JA: During World War II you had rationing and shortages. Did those affect your grocery business, and if so, how, and how did you compensate for all of that?
JC: There wasn’t any meat. You very seldom could get any meat at all. My butcher had a little farm there on 75th and Grand [Avenue]. There is a shopping center in there now that has been empty since they built it.
JA: Yes, I know the one.
JC: That was his farm. He put pigs in there. He had as many as 300 pigs at one time. We would kill them all and sell them to the stores, so we had pork. He had a lot of friends who [we could] buy a beef from. He used to work for an outfit by the name of Tovera’s [Meat Packing Company]. I don’t know if you have heard of them, or not.
JA: No, I haven’t.
JC: They had a slaughterhouse on East Van Buren [in Phoenix]. You know where that castle [Tovera Castle] is right next to that big slaughterhouse?
[END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE TWO]
JC: First we bought one that had closed down. It was sponsored under the Associated Grocers. I don’t know if you if you have ever heard of them?
JA: Oh, yes. You bought it or the Association did?
JC: This was separate. All the meat guys put in money. I put in $5,000. and there were maybe 30, 40, or 50 guys who put in $5,000. They would kill the beef and we would have beef [in the stores]. The only thing wrong with that was that we had to sell part of it to the [United States] Army. So they kept on taking more and we wouldn’t get our money out of the Army. [It was] like pulling teeth. Half of the time they cheated us out of a bunch of it. Then they went broke. So each of us put another $5,000 and we got one on 7th Street and the riverbed, another slaughterhouse was there. They ran that for two or three years and that went broke. By that time the war was over and we were starting to get meat from the regular packinghouses.
JA: So it was really tough to get meat?
JC: Yes, especially bacon. At Luke Field [Luke Air Force Base, Glendale, Arizona], they would send them slab bacon and hams. They couldn’t use all of them. They had to empty their walk-ins [refrigerators], otherwise they wouldn’t get their new quota. So lots of the guys were bringing in slabs of bacon and ham to the store and ask us if we would slice it for them. I remember our butcher sliced hundreds of those slabs of bacon, or sliced the hams on the power saw for them. But meat was scarce, the Army [government] got everything they needed and more, and they wasted it.
JA: So these people, who would be bringing you the bacon and ham, would be the officers?
JC: No, they were some of the guys that dug it out of the garbage. The slabs had the original paper on it and they would throw them away in the garbage. They’d tell the guys that they would be throwing away some hams and bacon so if you guys want it. Anyway, but that’s the way it was.
JA: There wasn’t any way that you, as merchants, could get that surplus?
JC: No, there wasn’t any way that you could get it.
JA: That was too bad.
JC: We would get so many pounds of bacon already sliced. My butcher was having so much trouble, that he started what he called the Bacon List. You put your name on this pad. He got 12 pounds of bacon. Each one on the list got a pound and they would cross their name off the list. If they wanted some more they could put their on the bottom of the list.
JA: Sure.
JC: That’s the way we solved the bacon problem, the best [way] we could. Every once in awhile, we would get some bacon.
JA: Get enough for everybody?
JC: Oh, you never got enough for everybody, but everybody got something, sooner or later.
JA: What were some of the other things that you couldn’t keep or get in the store?
JC: We had plenty of bread, plenty of flour. I don’t know, it mostly was the meat. Coffee got a little short sometimes.
JA: Would you characterize your business as prosperous during the wartime?
JC: Yes, it was all right. I got a liquor license for it in 1941, I think it was. That’s what was scarce, whiskey.
JA: Oh was it?
JC: I would get 25 cases of whiskey and then I would just bring out five cases. The guys from Luke Field would come in and all line up. All we could get were fifths. So you would sell one fifth to [each] of the guys.
JA: That was probably very lucrative, wasn’t it?
JC: In a way yes, and in a way no. The only [brand] you could get, mostly, was Schenley’s. They called it Black Label Schenley’s and there was one made out of potatoes because sugar was scarce. You know where the Thunderbird School is?
JA: Yes.
JC: They grew a lot of potatoes there, and they would put them in and chopped and dried them, and shipped them to make whiskey.
JA: Oh?
JC: Another thing wrong with it, they used to be able to get gin from Mexico and tequila from Mexico. You had to buy one case of gin or tequila in order to get one case of whiskey. So once the five cases of whiskey were gone, the only thing left on the shelf [would be] the gin or tequila. Those we sold at cost in order to get rid of it, because we had so much of it. So you didn’t come out as good on it, actually. After the war was over [we] started getting more whiskey.
JA: Did the people in the community drink a lot too, or was it just the soldiers [airmen]?
JC: People in the community were just like people in any other community, they drank!
JA: What were some of the social things that you did as a part of the community?
JC: They had deals right there in the middle of the park [Murphy Park].
JA: Like—
JC: Like Cinco de Mayo [and] the Sixteenth of September. They still have it, don’t they?
JA: Yes.
JC: They used to close off 58th, where the telephone company is, and the Palomino [Jewelry Store] and stuff is there. They would close that off and that was a place where the people could dance. Glendale Avenue would have to be kept open because it was designated as a military road to Luke Field at that time. That [street] and Northern Avenue, I think. They had dances in there and all kinds of food that was sold. They had little stands, they still do now, don’t they?
JA: I believe—
JC: Or haven’t they started yet? They usually have one around the 16 of September.
JA: That will be coming up in two weeks.
JC: That will be coming up soon. I don’t know if they will have it here or if they will have it over, they used to have it downtown. They used to have the Christmas Tree, it used to be there on the corner across from the gym that they closed. I don’t know if it is still there or if they killed it.
JA: The tree?
JC: Yes, I think they killed it when they built City Hall.
JA: That would be my guess, I don’t recall seeing it.
JC: It was wired up and it had the power going into it. It had plugs right in it.
JA: Huge!
JC: On Easter, sometimes in the old days, they used to have the candle parade from there going over to the churches.
JA: Oh, really?
JC: I don’t know if they have that any more, or not.
JA: I don’t know. I never heard of it.
JC: I don’t go downtown too much, anymore.
JA: No?
JC: After 40 years of going downtown, I don’t go down!
JA: Was there anything that you as business people sponsored in Glendale, an activity, or a club, or whatever?
JC: They sponsored everything that went [on]. Usually the grocery stores had to ante up a little for it. You knew that, didn’t you?
JA: No, I didn’t.
JC: They’d come in, “If you can’t give money, can you give so much of this.” So many potatoes, or some much of this, or so many cases of soda pop. You always do, they still do. The same thing is going on in El Mirage.
JA: Sort of a community service?
JC: Yes. Out there we sponsor the baseball team, I think it is, one baseball team every year. The old town is a big city now!
JA: If you [can], summarize in a couple of statements, why you enjoyed Glendale.
JC: People were friendly. You knew everybody up and down the line, merchants and customers. In fact, the other day I was paying my water bill and I saw two or three of my customers there. They stopped and wanted to talk. You know where you pay your water bill in that little room? One of them was telling me that his wife died, and she was one of my old customers. A lot of the poor people that were here, are now living in El Mirage. I see them out there—
JA: Really?
JC: —in the store.
JA: Why is that? Do you have any idea?
JC: What?
JA: Why they moved to El Mirage?
JC: It is too expensive to live up here. They can’t afford these houses. Out there they have quite a few government houses that they rent. Some one them are renting houses for as low as $45.00 a month.
JA: Wow!
JC: They pay according to their income. You can’t even get anything over here for $45.00 a month.
JA: You can’t rent a room.
JC: This woman is a widow, she has one or two kids, and she gets food stamps, and she has one of those houses that the government furnishes them. They have medical facilities out there too, that don’t cost anything. They get by better, I suppose, than Glendale [people]. I don’t where they would go? Where do the poor people go for medical facilities here?
JA: I don’t know, unless they can be part of these group plans, like HMO’s [Health Maintenance Organization].
JC: They don’t have money for that.
JA: I don’t think so. So I don’t know.
JC: Out there they have one outfit that is a family deal and certain times of the week a dentist comes in and [does] free work; and certain times of the week there this doctor comes in and that doctor comes in. They check the people.
JA: That is great.
JC: I think it is all free.
JA: That is great.
JC: They are regular doctors who charge money in other places.
JA: They charge enough somewhere else to pay for their services down there!
JC: No, maybe not. Maybe it is just their way of donating to the—
JA: Civic duty.
JC: Civic duty, to the people, to the less fortunate ones.
JA: I was going to say that I think that is a better welfare system than when the government gets itself involved and tries to do it all for us.
JC: [Laughter]
JA: Let me ask some questions here. They have a biographical sheet and some of this may be a little bit monotonous, but maybe you can help me fill this in and give me some of the dates.
When were you born and in what city and state?
JC: [I was born] in Ray, Arizona, March 25, 1917.
JA: Right in the middle of [World War I], or we hadn’t quite gotten into it yet.
JC: Yes, I think they had gotten into it by that time.
JA: Date and place of your marriage?
JC: I never got married.
JA: Never? The date you arrived in Glendale?
JC: I think it was in May of 1940.
JA: Names of the schools that you attended and the date you graduated. You went to Ray Elementary?
JA: No, Sonora Elementary.
JC: Sonora Elementary and Ray High School.
JA: What year did you graduate from high school, do you [remember]?
JC: In 1936. That was before you were born!
JA: A couple of years!
JC: What?
JA: A couple of years! [Laughter] And any college?
JC: University [of Arizona], [in] Tucson. [I] graduated in 1940, I think it was May of 1940.
JA: You came straight from the U of A to start your shop!
JC: Two weeks! Two weeks after I graduated I was in the grocery business. [Laughter] Sounds silly!
JA: Wish I had done it!
JC: I was going to go to work for the Valley [National] Bank. I had a chance to go to the Valley [National] Bank in Phoenix or the Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson. But they both paid $75. a month.
JA: Did you do better than that [in the] grocery [business]?
JC: Yes.
JA: Good. I would have expected that. Any organizations, whether fraternal, civic, or social that you were a part of? Religious affiliation?
JC: Catholic.
JA: Military service?
JC: No, I was called to the thing [the draft board] and I went down for the physical. When I was 13 I [was] shot with a shotgun and the right eye doesn’t work. I can’t see out of it. I have 400 vision.
JA: Wow!
JC: I wanted to go in and I just about talked the guy in there in to [letting me go in], because they needed [men]. Then who [should be] down there but my eye doctor from Phoenix. “What are you doing here?” He told them, “What have you got [here]? This man can’t even see out of his right eye.” So he said you do something else for the good of the country instead of [fighting]. He said with men like you, your buddy will get killed. [Laughter] That’s what he told me!
JA: I’ll be.
JC: What?
JA: I’ll be. So they just let you go back to your business, or did you have to do some other service?
JC: No that was it.
JA: This is a question that I forgot to ask you. During the war times there were a lot of bond drives, scrap drives, and other kinds of drives. Did your grocery [store] get involved in any of that?
JC: We got involved in all of those when they had them, all the grocery [stores] got involved in them.
JA: So that was just standard?
JC: It was a standard deal.
JA: Do you have any scrapbooks or photo albums that might show something or tell us something about Glendale?
JC: No.
JA: Pictures of buildings?
JC: I looked for them, but I don’t know who borrowed it, and I couldn’t find it. I had two brothers who were in the [United States] Army.
JA: Where did they serve?
JC: My brother Jimmy, who was a partner with me in the grocery store, he went into Europe as far as Germany, I think. He came back all right. I had a brother older than I am, by the name of Pete, he was on the B-29’s that were bombing Japan. He got killed. By the way, he was in the first group that went out.
JA: With [General James H.] Doolittle?
JC: No, no, those weren’t B-29’s.
JA: Those were B-24’s, that’s right.
JC: Yes.
JA: Okay.
JC: I’ll show you a book. The Army gave me a book on things.
JA: Oh, really?
JC: Yes. They lost three planes, I think. The first two they got rescued in the ocean and the [crew] on the third one got killed. So he never made it back. It was one or two weeks before the war ended. The last run was the run to Osaka, Japan. First they started off from India and they would fly over to China and that way. Later on they moved to a little island that they called Tinian. He was an engineer on a B-29.
JA: He didn’t fly one of the A-bomb [atomic] [planes]?
JC: No, he got killed two weeks before they dropped the first A-bomb.
JA: Sorry to hear that.
JC: Yes.
JA: What were your other brother and sisters names who lived in the Glendale area at anytime? Did all of you come and live here?
JC: One was Thomas Coury. He had a furniture store, where the gym was, for 40 some years.
JA: Do you know what his birth date is?
JC: No, I think it was [in] 1910, I’m not too sure. Then I have a sister that lives on Orangewood [Avenue].
JA: Her name is?
JC: Mary [Coury] Schneider.
JA: S-N-Y-E-D-E-R?
JC: No, S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R.
JA: Okay, and her birth date?
JC: I think it was 1904. She is 87.
JA: Do you know the month and the day, by any chance?
JC: I think it was January 1, or January 2, 1904. [It was ] January 2, 1904.
JA: Did Jimmy or Pete ever live in Glendale?
JC: Yes, Jim lived on Orangewood [Avenue]. His wife still lives in the same house. His wife’s name is Margaret.
JA: Do you know Jimmy’s birth date?
JC: I think he was born in 1921. I don’t remember what month it was.
JA: How about Pete? He is older than you are.
JC: Yes, Pete was born in 1915.
JA: Were you all born down in Ray, or the Sonora area?
JC: Yes, most of them, all except my sister Mary. She was born in Lebanon. My brother Tom was born in Bisbee [Cochise County, Arizona]. No, not Bisbee, what’s the name of it?
JA: Morenci?
JC: Morenci. The rest of them were born in Ray.
JA: What is your father’s name?
JC: Elias. E-L-I-A-S.
JA: Middle name?
JC: Thomas.
JA: His birth date, any idea?
JC: [In] 1882, I think. I think he was born in March, sometime, I don’t know.
JA: His occupation was dry goods store?
JC: Grocer, he was a grocer.
JA: He was a grocer. That’s right.
JC: And I was a grocer!
JA: And your uncle was—
JC: And my nephews are grocers! [Laughter]
JA: For some reason I latched on to your uncle dry goods store.
JC: My uncle was a dry goods man.
JA: Your mom’s full name?
JC: Gaeta. G-A-E-T-A.
JA: Okay, and her maiden name?
JC: Daou.
JA: Her birth date?
JC: I think it was 1884. I don’t know what month or [day].
JA: Did she ever have an occupation? Did she work occasionally?
JC: At times, the wives helped their husbands in the stores! [Laughter] And raised the kids!
JA: Is there anything extra that you could tell me about your uncle, and his family, and their store here in Glendale?
JC: No, they had that dry goods store. Later on they moved down across from the Valley [National] Bank. I think it is a flower shop now. [The Daou’s store was called the Boston Store.]
JA: Okay. He just maintained the same store, just different location?
JC: Yes, they changed from a complete dry goods store to a women’s clothing store, at the time they moved over there.
JA: Okay. This has been very interesting. I do appreciate your [time].
JC: I hope it helps some!
JA: Oh, it is [very helpful]. Businesses change so much.
JC: I’ll tell you who can tell you a lot of stuff, Volene Stockham.
JA: I have talked with Volene.
JC: You talked to her?
JA: We had a very good time with her. We talked some about their butcher store. Her brother-in-law [Paul Stockham], I guess, was one of the early people who designed coolers.
JC: Oh yes, they made those straw [evaporative] coolers. He was one of the first ones to make them and he used to sell them.
JA: Yes. There is one house that still has one left on it. I went over to look at it, just to see what it looked like.
JC: It was just round, didn’t have the corners.
JA: Just a round mat all the way around. Really quite interesting.
JC: Yes.
JA: Neat lady, we had a good time with her.
JC: What?
JA: She’s a very neat lady.
JC: She’s a nice lady.
JA: She really is.
JC: Yes, they [were] good people. [Buster] Foster was a pretty nice fellow, but the Stockham’s were more friendly.
JA: Is Foster still alive?
JC: Who?
JA: Mr. Foster?
JC: Yes, he lives in Sun City, [Maricopa County, Arizona].
JA: Does he? Do you know what—
JC: He still owns that—
JA: Still owns the building?
JC: Yes. That building where the finance place is closed.
JA: What is his first name? Do you know?
JC: He used to go by initials. It was G, or J. R., or R. J., I don’t know.
JA: They used to call him “Buzz”, didn’t they? “Buzz” Foster, was that his nickname? [A. B. “Buster” Foster]
JC: He was older than I am, so I always called him Mr. Foster.
JA: As it should be!
[END OF TAPE TWO – SIDE ONE]